I am about as pro-Google a person as you're going to find in the media. I've had friends at all levels of the company since its founding, and still do now.
When I signed up for Google Plus, it recommended 500 people for me to invite. You know, and once I invited those 500 people I got another 500 people. So it has a huge install base that it can start from.
Thought is like a bubble rising to the surface. When thought is joined to will, we call it power. That which strikes the sick person whom you are trying to help is not thought, but power.
A great product will survive all abuse. Google Glass is a great product. How do I know? Every person I put it on (I did it dozens of times at 500 Startups yesterday) smiles. No other product has done that since the iPod.
I don't think I'm a witty person. To me, a witty person is a funny person who is also a smart person. My friend David Rakoff, who died a few years ago, he was a witty person. Fran Lebowitz is a witty person. I don't think there are that many witty people around, so you tend to notice them when they do come around. I don't consider myself to be that.
I never thought of myself as a wealthy person. I've thought of myself as a person who has had a lot of luck. I don't have the same stress that other people have, but there are too many things I could have done differently if wealth was what I was after. If I was all about money, I would have lived in L.A.
I'm a person who likes to tackle challenges. Google was a challenge when I got there. I think AOL's a challenge. The way we run the company is a very team-focused environment.
I usually cast myself in things because acting is how I best relate to artistic impulses. It's what I've wanted to do since I was a child, so a scene usually plays itself out in my head with me performing it. And if I cast myself that's one less person I have to pay, one less person I have to explain my vision to, one less person I have to worry about.
Since I became more confident, I've thought, 'Right, let me get myself on the market'. So I joined Tinder and Chappie, and it was funny because, at first, the sites thought I was an imposter.
The down market favours the small two-, three-, four-person company, not the huge company with 100 people losing half a million dollars a month.
The idea that you live your life in phases - I've never bought that. I feel like I'm the same person who sat in at the draft board in 1965, I'm the same person who joined a fraternity, I'm the same person who got an MFA at Bennington, and I'm the same person who founded Weather Underground. My values are still intact.
I think there's huge room for a personality who can create a following, and that personality can be a person or a company.
I feel a huge gratification out of being right. To see my projects connect in a way in which the audience is passionate is a huge compliment. For me it's like, if a person is ambitious enough, they run in a tunnel that doesn't end...And I learn things about myself all the time.
The person is a mystery. What I'm playing is the person so I really get to tell you and show you and communicate to you who I think the real person is and that real person is me. The most important thing is to play the human being you are creating, which is my job.
No company should depend on one person no matter how that person is smart or genius, whether it's Apple or News Corp, or Citibank or any other company in the world.
Since I'm not a fashion model, there's a limit to how nice I can make myself. I don't regard myself as an ugly person, but I don't think of myself as someone who would choose to be a model. I'm somebody who might be, I'd like to think, a role model for people who want to become lawyers.