[Melinda Gates] is a lot of fun to work with. There's some of the people skills that she's better at and cares about more. It'd be a mistake not to think of her as very numerical and interested in the science. I enjoy, if I get ahead of her, say, understanding the immune system, then we can spend a few hours, where I'm going through how amazing it is and interesting, and how that affects our creating new products, so I've always had a partner.

We're in a period of uncertainty about [Donald Trump] administration policies and the range of what might happen is particularly higher. I don't think that these R&D and innovation budgets will be substantially reduced.

Innovation is a good thing. The human condition - put aside bioterrorism and a few footnotes - is improving because of innovation.

What we're really after is simply that people acquire a legal license for Windows for each computer they own before they move on to Linux or Sun Solaris or BSD or OS/2 or whatever.

In this business, by the time you realize you're in trouble, it's too late to save yourself. Unless you're running scared all the time, you're gone.

Software is more important than hardware.

The US spends more on energy R&D than all other countries put together, and I personally consider it quite inadequate. In fact, I would have said we should more than double it, if I thought the absorptive capacity could scale up and if it was actually possible to get to that level.