When you think about email or IMing, why aren't you writing back? I can see your avatar, I know you're online, why aren't you writing me back? But with Twitter, everybody sends their responses to Twitter, and Twitter then sends them out to everyone. So there's not this constant connection. You can be hyperconnected, then you can take a break for a couple days and it's fine.

The thing that excites me, and the thing that excited me about Twitter, is the idea of a flock of birds moving around an object in flight.

I thought I was going to stay at Google, because it was a great place to work.

You can shut down a service, and yet people will find ways to communicate.

Willingness to take risks is the path to success.

I started as an artist and I had a side job moving some heavy boxes for a publishing company. They had just gotten a Mac for their art department, the department that creates the book covers. I was kind of showing the art director a thing or two about how to use a Mac. And one day everyone went out to lunch and I jumped on the computer and designed a book jacket and slipped it in the pile to go to the review board in New York. They picked my jacket and when the art director got back to Boston, he wanted to know who designed it and I said, "Me." He was like, "The box guy?"

I never even graduated college. I never finished learning, as it were, and I have a psychological need to be in a learning environment at all times.