Steve Ballmer

If we see an opportunity in the software/hardware seam, we're going to take it.

Diversity of form factor matters, and not compromising either form factor. You need diversity of price point. That's quite important.

Apple is a failure because they missed social? Nobody would say that, because they are having great success.

The truth is that you can't really tell how anybody's doing in the tech business for at least five or 10 years.

In the case of music, Apple got out early. They were the first to really recognize that you couldn't just think about the device and all the pieces separately. Bravo.

I love Los Angeles. I love Seattle, too, which is where we have our home. But the notion of spending a lot of time in Los Angeles has been exciting to me for years. The community down there is great.

The Clippers are more valuable in Los Angeles. It's a phenomenal city, a phenomenal market, phenomenal everything.

The NBA has made it clear they want fan bases to be able to keep their teams.

As a businessman, if you ask me what I'm proud of, I'm proud of the fact that I made $250 billion under my watch as CEO.

Microsoft's culture is very strong.

You've got to remember there's intense competition between Microsoft and Amazon.

I think Amazon is a place where people don't want to work.

I loved every minute of my time at Microsoft, but I had always envisioned having another phase of life just because I thought that would be interesting. It had never been my plan to work until I literally didn't want to do anything and then hang it up.

When you're running a company, you have employees - lots of them - that can interrupt your schedule. You have customers that can interrupt your schedule. You have a certain obligation to wave the flag because people expect to get out and wave the flag. The number of ways that others can command your time is high.

If you look at companies with upside potential, Twitter's right there. They've established a brand in a world where it's extremely difficult to establish a brand. It's a global brand, people recognize it, people want to let you know what their Twitter handles are, etc.

We will make our products work out of the box.

I come back to the same thing: We've got the greatest pipeline in the company's history in the next 12 months, and we've had the most amazing financial results possible over the last five years, and we're predicting being back at double-digit revenue growth in fiscal year '06.

I'm very, very bullish about our prospects, and as I tell our board, as I tell our employees, this is the time to invest. There's so much opportunity. Let's just invest in that opportunity, and really get after it.

And then you take a look at Spaces, there is this great innovation that came out of nowhere. We have the number one blogging site in the world because of the innovation that's there.

We've grown from 18% of the profits of the top 25 companies in our industry to 23% of the profits of the top 25 companies in our industry over the last five years. Profits are up over 70%, where the industry profit is up about 35%. Pretty good.