I care much more about saving the lives of mothers and babies than I do about a fancy museum somewhere.

[Bill Gates] wanted me to stay working at Microsoft, but I didn't think he could be CEO and we could have the family life that we both had growing up, which is what we envisioned. I knew I would go back to work at some point later to some profession. I just didn't know what.

Even in our own agriculture strategy, if we got a great new drought-resistant seed and we managed to get it distributed in the system, we just assumed that it would reach female farmers. That's a false assumption, because women don't interact with agro-dealers. So if you don't develop specific programming to ensure that seed gets in a woman's hands, then the extra income [generated by higher-yielding crops] goes into her husband's hands.

I realized that the only way to get into a good college was to be valedictorian or salutatorian. So that was my goal.

The fact that 98 percent of women in [the U.S.] who are sexually experienced say they use birth control doesn't make sex any less sacred. It just means that they're getting to make choices about their lives.

It's important to remember that behind every data point is a daughter, a mother, a sister—a person with hopes and dreams.

Having children made us look differently at all these things that we take for granted, like taking your child to get a vaccine against measles or polio.