“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

“We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life.”

“For most of my life, I’ve felt that there must be more to our existence than meets the eye.This is who I am, and you can’t expect me to be someone I’m not.”

“You've baked a really lovely cake, but then you've used dog shit for frosting.”

“I've never believed that they're separate. Leonardo da Vinci was a great artist and a great scientist. Michelangelo knew a tremendous amount about how to cut stone at the quarry. The finest dozen computer scientists I know are all musicians. Some are better than others, but they all consider that an important part of their life. I don't believe that the best people in any of these fields see themselves as one branch of a forked tree. I just don't see that.People bring these things together a lot. Dr. Land at Polaroid said, "I want Polaroid to stand at the intersection of art and science," and I've never forgotten that. I think that that's possible, and I think a lot of people have tried.”

“My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.”