I'd like to dial it back 5% or 10% and try to have a vacation that's not just e-mail with a view.

Mars is the only place in the solar system where it's possible for life to become multi-planetarian.

When you struggle with a problem, that's when you understand it.

I’m nauseatingly pro-American. I would have come here from any country. The U.S. is where great things are possible.

The only reason I was able to accomplish things is the great people willing to work with me. A company is a group of people organized to create a product or service, and that product or service is only as good as the people in the company - and how excited they are about creating it. I do want to recognize a ton of super-talented people. Without them, I would have accomplished very little. I just happen to be the face of the companies.

I want to make rockets 100 times, if not 1,000 times better. The ultimate objective is to make humanity a multiplanet species. Thirty years from now, there'll be a base on the moon and on Mars, and people will be going back and forth on SpaceX rockets.

If anyone thinks they'd rather be in a different part of history, they're probably not a very good student of history. Life sucked in the old days. People knew very little, and you were likely to die at a young age of some horrible disease. You'd probably have no teeth by now. It would be particularly awful if you were a woman.