If an innovative piece of software comes along, Microsoft copies it and makes it part of Windows. This is not innovation; this is the end of innovation.

What can a sales person say to somebody to get them to buy a product that they already use every day if they don't like it? Nothing.

When you live your life in different ways, it makes people around you become uncomfortable. So deal with it. They don't know what you are going to do.

In some ways, getting away from the headquarters and having a little time to reflect allows you to find errors in your strategy. You get to rethink things. Often, that helps me correct a mistake that I made or someone else is about to make.

I think after a certain amount, I’m going to give almost everything I have to charity. What else can you do with it? You can't spend it, even if you try. I've been trying.

It's fascinating as we continue to innovate and lead the way in both the application space and the database space. In the very beginning, people said you couldn't make relational databases fast enough to be commercially viable. I thought we could, and we were the first to do it. But we took tremendous abuse until IBM said, "Oh yeah, this stuff is good."

I have had all the disadvantages required for success.