Working class life has been important to me; it's not a question of pity or disaster- but of enjoying the comedy, warmth and generosity of spirit that you find there – alongside the use of language, dialects, and the stories of childhood and old-age.

When I got better, even simple things like being able to wake-up, go for a walk, speak, and observe life, felt viscerally stunning and good. I found a state of being – a state that gave me perspective and feeling about life and my place in it.

It's taken for me to get into my 30s to realise I am more than the media told me I was- I have more to say, so do my friends. We are intelligent, we are strong, we are multi-faceted, we are vulgar and we are funny.

When you set out on that yellow-brick-road of life to fulfil your goals, just be the best you can be – and whether that means you finish as champion, first, second, tenth, whatever… if you've done your best? You're winning. The martial arts however can teach you a lot about how to perform – how to dig deep – and how to be better than you think you can be.

I don't know why I didn't just walk-away from Los Alamos...

Without any major adjustments to our conduct and behaviour, we will see the unravelling of an informed civilisation.

If you're going to be a city of love and compassion, you're going to have to develop economics infrastructure, capital planning and job creation policies, complementing them with education.

Our singular filter is to find the people, projects and opportunities that we think are going to be game-changing for humanity. If you succeed at doing that, you'll make plenty of money (even if you fail half the time).

In my view, all the big existential risks are anthropogenic, arising out of human activity. More specifically, the biggest existential risks in this century arise out of anticipated future technological advances.

To be a billionaire in America today is less a matter of merit than it is a matter of being at the right place at the right time, and being a beneficiary of a set of rules designed to benefit billionaires.

Fear is like being shot out of a cannon. Imagine a car has fallen on someone I love—I get this clear, calm, intense bolt of energy. Anxiety, on the other hand, is like being haunted. You never actually see what's scaring you—it's just a story in your head that never goes away.

I think that inequality within societies and between regions has become a key cause for conflict, exacerbated by rapid information dissemination, as people are now more aware of inequalities.