I set a rule that people weren't allowed to send good news unless they sent around an equal amount of bad news. We had to get a balanced picture. In fact, I kind of favored just hearing about the accounts we were losing because ... bad news is generally more actionable than good news.

What are the top 20 universities in the world that do good materials research that might create carbon fibers to do jet stream kites or new magnets that will allow [energy] generation to be done up there and you just bring the electricity down. You either have to bring down rotational energy, which is hard, or you have to have the generator up there and bring down the electricity. Well, putting the generator up there is hard to do because it's too heavy.

I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one. And I'm still fanatical, but now I'm a little less fanatical.

Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren't so irritating.

I did not even finish my studies

Whenever you have a few setbacks, the idea that half as many children are dying now as back in 1990 and so... it was over 12 million a year, now it's less than 6 million a year. We have a clear path to get that under 3 million a year and we know what to do. And this generation of young Africans is a very large group.

There's only one trick in software, and that is using a piece of software that's already been written.