The best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating systems.

When you have a product that has zero sales, it is easy for people to say whatever they want about it and almost fantasize about it.

In fact, batteries haven't improved over the last 100 years as much as they would need to in order to make that happen. So I'm invested in a lot of battery companies - and there's a lot that exists I'm not in. They're all having a tough time achieving it.

I read a lot of obscure books and it is nice to open a book.

To get a big company moving fast, especially on a many-headed opportunity like the Internet, you have to have hundreds of people participating and coming up with ideas.

It is a high bar to say that it's more fun than working on software because the work at Microsoft that both Melinda [Gates] and I did was thrilling. We were making breakthroughs and empowering people.

In my view, investing in public libraries is an investment in the nation's future.