The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

I was a bit of a wild kid.

Benito Mussolini created the word 'fascism.' He defined it as 'the merging of the state and the corporation.' He also said a more accurate word would be 'corporatism.' This was the definition in Webster's up until 1987 when a corporation bought Webster's and changed it to exclude any mention of corporations.

Big data is going to make us all healthier.

Traditionally, when you talk to people who have Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, they'll talk about how they're in five or six studies, and they've been sequenced by each study. That's just fat in the system. Just have a single data set that then you can share. You can make the entire system more efficient.

When you try new things, you will make mistakes. That's OK.

The challenge in a startup is you hit a lot of turbulence, and you want people who understand that it's just turbulence and not a crisis.

In Silicon Valley, you want things done instantly.

I think that the idea of people wanting to steal your genome remains a little bit in the world of science fiction.

Health is not sort of like a 6-month project. Health is a lifetime accumulation of behaviors.

I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about genetic information and what you can and cannot learn.

One of the most exciting aspects of 23andMe is that we're enabling you to watch a revolution unfold live during your lifetime, and I think that the decoding of the genome, in my opinion, is the most fascinating discovery of our lifetime, and you get to be part of it.

There's not enough competition and innovation in healthcare.

I think being on a constraint with money makes you much more creative.

I grew up with my mom being very, very cheap, so when it's free, I'm like, 'Oh my God, it's free - I have to take as much as I can!'

You don't necessarily want your physician to have all your information.

I hope that Los Altos is one of the first cities to have self-driving cars, and if that's true, well, awesome, because there's a lot of parking lots that we could get rid of and use for parks. That would be amazing!

You should know how to take care of yourself. That's one of the things that I got from my mother most - she always said that if you don't take care of yourself, no one will.

I have an unreasonably optimistic view of the world.

I've come to the conclusion that you shouldn't have to see a genetic counselor. It should be a choice.

I think that for people who are trying to make a difference, you have to start the company being naive. You wouldn't do it if you understood all the work. I work a lot. I wish it was easier.

I get parking tickets all the time.

The fact that my environment influences my life so much - and that my environment is in my control - gives me a great sense of empowerment over my health and my life.

One of the things that got me interested in genetics was the relationship between genes and environment. We are all dealt a certain deck of cards, but our environment can influence the outcomes.