I have never left the company. I keep a tiny residual salary to this day because that's where my loyalty should be forever. I want to be an "employee" on the company data base. I won't engineer, I'd rather be basically retired, due to my family. (talking about his relationship with Apple Inc)

I wanted to be an elementary school teacher my whole life.

You have to seek the simplest implementation of a problem solution in order to know when you've reached your limit in that regard. Then it's easy to make tradeoffs, to back off a little, for performance reasons. You can simplify and simplify and simplify yet still find other incredible ways to simplify further.

I had a TV set and a typewriter and that made me think a computer should be laid out like a typewriter with a video screen.

Pretty much I want to be Steve Wozniak, who I decided I was at a young age and not change. I want to go back to school and get my college degree like I would have without Apple. I want to teach young kids like I would have without Apple. And part of it is I'm accessible. I'm open. And so many people e-mail me and get me. And as much as I can I try to answer people, listen to them, be polite and say yes.

Teachers started recognizing me and praising me for being smart in science and that made me want to be even smarter in science!

A lot of hacking is playing with other people, you know, getting them to do strange things.