Recently somebody said, "Hey, you lost weight," and I said, "Yeah, thirty-five pounds and three and a half billion dollars." So I'm quite a bit lighter and more flexible than I was.

Synergy is the driver. There are two levels of synergy: there are operating synergies, which, you know, you'd have to be stupid not to try to take advantage of, and then there are strategic synergies. In other words, in what positions you would be more sustainable, more long term, and so on.

There's an old saying that the government is your partner from birth, but they don't get to come to all the meetings.

Synergies are something that the CEO basically has to force to happen, because organizations are, generally, like bodies in motion that tend to stay in motion. It's very hard to get big organizations to change. And it takes really a very powerful mandate to force things to happen.

The curse of the cable industry over all these years as an operating reality is that every year the debt goes up (and) all the money generated gets reinvested, and then some.

What you really are afraid of is that you're competing against somebody who is rich and irrational. I mean, it used to be a given, a saying in the industry: Don't ever bid against Rupert Murdoch for anything Rupert wants, because if you win you lose. You will have paid way too much.

I think private ownership is generally superior to public because you care about the land more and it doesnt get trashed.