The best customer service is if the customer doesn't need to call you, doesn't need to talk to you. It just works.

Invention requires a long-term willingness to be misunderstood.

The thing about inventing is you have to be both stubborn and flexible. The hard part is figuring out when to be which.

I'm skeptical that the novel will be "re­invented." If you start thinking about a medical textbook or something, then, yes, I think that's ripe for reinvention. You can imagine animations of a beating heart. But I think the novel will thrive in its current form. That doesn't mean that there won't be new narrative inventions as well. But I don't think they'll displace the novel.

I'm skeptical of any mission that has advertisers at its centerpiece.

Ebooks had to happen.

I'm not saying that advertising is going away. But the balance is shifting. If today the successful recipe is to put 70 percent of your energy into shouting about your service and 30 percent into making it great, over the next 20 years I think that's going to invert.