Having kids has been a fantastic thing for me. It's meant that I'm a little more balanced. In my twenties I worked massively, hardly took vacation at all. Now, I, with the help of my wife, I'm always making sure I've got a good balance of how I spend my time.

As we have taken diarrhea and pneumonia down, even malaria down quite a bit, the portion of the days that are very early in that 5 years - the first month, the first day - it's about half now. Yet that's the part we understand the least.

I have drifted away from thinking about these philanthropic things. And it was only as the wealth got large enough and Melinda and I had talked about the view that wealth wasn't something that would be good to just pass to the children.

Windows is probably the most important product in the entire PC industry. Everything we do in terms of supporting touch, new hardware, accessibility has incredible impact.

(On being the world's richest man) I wish I wasn't ... There's nothing good that comes out of that. You get more visibility as a result of it.

I'm truly saddened to learn of Steve Jobs' death. The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come. For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it's been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.

The flatter the corporate hierarchy, the more likely it is that employees will communicate bad news and act upon it.