"My business experience confirmed my belief in empowering people. For example, at Bain Capital we bought Accuride, a company that made truck rims and wheels, because we saw untapped potential there. We instituted performance bonuses for the management team, which had a dramatic impact. The managers made the plants more productive, and the company started growing, adding 300 jobs while Bain was involved. My faith in people, not government, is at the foundation of my plan to strengthen America's middle class."

"Spider-Man"

"It was nice in a way to work with more obscure Marvel characters because then the audience wouldn’t have a strong expectation of what they were going to find. It gives us a lot of creative freedom."

"It's kind of a difference based upon mood and vibe of the material. There's something about the stoic heroes of DC that could be contrasted against the hyperkinetic heroes of Marvel."

"I think they’re so complete now, Marvel. They probably don’t need me anymore. But if they needed me? I’d love to. It’s great to be wanted."

"Reflecting back on some of his co-creations in 1975, Stan Lee dubiously claimed that "Marvel Comics has never been into politics" or beholden to an "official party line" before offering a near-apology for the moral simplicity of the portrait of the Vietnam conflict in 1963's "Iron Man Is Born!" (Son of Origins 47.) A disinterested observer would find much evidence to counter these claims in the pages of Tales of Suspense between 1963 and 1968."

"I enjoyed my time at Marvel, and the people there, but it was time to go. I left Marvel because I'd hit the glass ceiling. I was never going to be promoted, so if I intended to make a mark in the business, it would be as a freelance writer, not an editor. Leaving Marvel allowed me to take assignments at several other companies, and ultimately, to help found Milestone."

"Much like the once wide-eyed Captain, I felt a little manipulated. Had I known those whiz-bang scenes from The Avengers were supposed to have more heft, I may have approached them differently as I was strapping that feed bag of popcorn to my face. I would have looked for more pathos in the Hulk flinging Loki around like a rag doll and muttering “puny God.” Perhaps it was less of a laugh line and more of a comment about fundamentalist religion’s unsuitability with liberty-loving New York. Which means I don't even want to think about that shawarma gag!"

"So the Chitauri were Al-Qaeda? O.K., good to know. A suspicion I had during Iron Man 3 was confirmed during Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (by which we mean the movies starring Marvel comic-book characters that aren't distributed by Sony or 20th Century Fox) has decided to go back and reposition the big battle from Marvel’s The Avengers as its 9/11. On the one hand, this is a “no duh” observation—at the end of The Avengers, New York was blown to smithereens. But the tenor in which Joss Whedon shot and cut the lengthy third act sequence was so zippy and fun that it seemed as if Marvel was “taking back” the iconography of New York’s destruction, from both the terrorists and real life. The key image from Avengers is an adulatory 360-degree swoop of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes assembled in full flex before the sturdy columns of Grand Central. It is not “Falling Man.”"

"Wired: …what’s the relationship like with the comic book side of the company? Is there back-and-forth?"

"If you had two things, and on one you earned 100% of the revenues from the efforts that you put into making it, and the other you earned a much smaller percentage for the same amount of time and effort, you’d be more likely to concentrate more heavily on the first, wouldn’t you?"

"The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction"

"Hulk (video game)"

"Spider-Man: Web of Shadows"

"Spider-Man 3 (video game)"

"Ultimate Spider-Man (video game)"

"The Incredible Hulk (1978 TV series)"

"Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Wolverine and the X-Men"

"X-Men: Evolution"

"X-Men: Animated Series"

"Spectacular Spider-Man"

"Spider-Man: The Animated Series"

"X-Men Origins: Wolverine"

"X-Men: The Last Stand"

"Spider-Man 3"

"Spider-Man 2"

"The Avengers (2012 film)"

"Ultimate Fantastic Four"

"X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back"

"Uncanny X-Men"

"Ultimate X-Men"

"Astonishing X-Men"

"The Incredible Hulk"

"Ultimate Spider-Man"

"The Amazing Spider-Man"

"New Avengers"

"Spider-Girl"

"Young Avengers"

"Avengers Forever"

"Nextwave; Agents of H.A.T.E."

"New Warriors"

"Marvel: Ultimate Alliance"

"Fantastic Four"

"Captain America"

"Don't bother trying to create a better commercial desktop OS -- it doesn't matter how hard you try, how many engineers you throw at the problem, how much money you spend, or how many years you put into it. Microsoft owns that space and, worse, the public is totally complicit with that fact. People will not stop using Windows. It is a losing battle."

"What is different about Microsoft is its distance from Silicon Valley. Rather than trading jobs for a better deal down the block, employees tend to stay put. With only a 7 percent turnover rate, Microsoft will hire 3,000 recruits this year. The insularity helps to reinforce a monolithic culture in which employees cultivate an almost fanatical devotion to their work and to Mr. Gates, whose combative cross-examinations on minute details are as legendary as his accessibility by E-mail to the lowliest employee. ("Even reasonably cynical people get starry-eyed over Bill," observed one of Microsoft's newer managers.)"

"Perhaps the most successful global monopoly is Microsoft, which has succeeded in gaining global market power not only in PC operating systems but in key applications such as browsers. [...] Microsoft's monopoly power leads not only to higher prices but to less innovation. [...] The failure to develop a global approach to global cartels and monopolies is yet another instance of economic globalization outpacing political globalization."

"Microsoft has had two goals. One was to copy the Mac and the other was to copy Lotus' success in the spreadsheet. And over the course of the last 10 years, Microsoft accomplished both of those goals. And now they are completely lost. They were able to copy the Mac because the Mac was frozen in time. The Mac didn't change much for the last 10 years. It changed maybe 10 percent. It was a sitting duck. It's amazing that it took Microsoft 10 years to copy something that was a sitting duck. Apple, unfortunately, doesn't deserve too much sympathy. They invested hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into R&D, but very little came out They produced almost no new innovation since the original Mac itself."

"We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis. In addition we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers. If the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data, we don't participate in it."