Anne Wojcicki

Big data is going to make us all healthier.

There's going to be space travel at some point.

I want the world's data accessible.

Every couple of weeks, someone writes in and says, '23andMe saved my life.'

If I know I'm at genetically high risk of Alzheimer's, maybe I don't plan to retire at 80, and maybe I'm more proactive about where I'm going to live and who's going to take care of me.

Employment and health insurance are now protected by the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.

I feel that gender balance in the work environment is actually the best recipe for success.

Pharma companies don't have a direct relationship with consumers, so they're always subjects.

You can get so much value just from being genotyped.

The goal of having more and more information is really to better be able to predict what is your health outcome going to be.

People want to be in charge of health information. They want it available the same way online banking is available.

When you have a laser focus, and you get distracted by what other people say, you can lose that laser focus.

There's nothing more raw in life than when you're sick.

My family and I were some of the first people to be genotyped.

People are used to dealing with risk.

You are not just about death and disease.

Most medications don't work effectively for a lot people.

The pharma industry is one of the few industries that comes up every year and brags about how much worse they got - like, now it costs $2 billion to make a drug, and it was a billion 5 years ago.

Part of the beauty of Silicon Valley is that people generally encourage you to think crazy. It's the hypothesis that there's nothing sacred that can't be changed.

There's a beauty in being unrealistic.

I was really raised in a gender-neutral household. I always knew I was a girl, but it never occurred to me that there was a limitation.

You don't do new things and try to change the system without generating debate.

I have mothers with small children come to me and say, 'You found that I had early breast cancer - because of you, I don't have cancer.' You've just prevented that person from dying early, and to prevent an early, unnecessary death is incredibly meaningful.

It's interesting: I think, genetically, there are people who need different things, like exercise. I need the exercise, others not so much, and I think more and more, we'll start to understand why people's bodies function in certain ways.

It doesn't matter how rich or poor you are: when you're sick, you want the exact same thing.

One of the things is, I don't read my own press. I never watch myself.

When Amazon emerged, people had these debates about whether people would put their credit cards online.

When I graduated from college in 1996 and the Internet was taking off, I remember this feeling that there was an open range where anything could be built.

There are a lot of people in D.C. who have never been on Twitter or Facebook and don't get what's happening.

As a child, I had a teacher who told me, 'Look, Anne, one person can't make a difference.'

I think we are definitely suffering from an information overload, but I believe that there is going to be better and better ways of organizing that information and processing it so that it will enhance your daily life.

We care a lot more about not having the disease than treating it.

Most important about what Ashoka is doing is that they make people believe that change is possible. That belief can go viral.

I have deep respect for Rep. Jackie Speier and all that she has done to open doors for women everywhere.

Incorporating genetics into a platform with the reach of ResearchKit will accelerate insights into illness and disease even further.

It's one of the things I want people to understand about science... You don't have to be the best person in the world at it. But you can be good, and there are so many different opportunities in science.

There's clearly things you can do in your environment to try to prevent disease, and I want to know what those things are.

Being the first FDA-authorized direct-to-consumer genetic test out there is revolutionary.

If we can actually decrease the failure rate from nine out of 10 drugs failing in clinical trials and instead have seven out of 10 instead failing, that is a major victory for drug discovery and for people having better therapy.

If you are somebody who has a disease, you are not complaining when someone starts to do work for you. That is your hope.

Being in Silicon Valley makes me strict when it comes to my children's technology use. I am surrounded by it all day, so I try to avoid it when I get home. I set screen-time limits, because I think it's good to diversify activities.

I tried to minimize exposure to technology before two. After that, I've taught the kids to use devices in moderation. It's important for them to learn how to control their behaviour themselves. Simply restricting access makes them want it more.

It's very important that children learn to use technology - it's part of life - but also that they learn when to put it down.

I do let the kids play on devices when we eat out - it's better than being thrown out of a restaurant.

I really like raw connections, and so I've always had a harder time in politics because I feel there's a lot of veneer around everything.

If health care is a $2.7 trillion industry, and a huge percentage is paid by the government, then you have to be involved in politics to make a difference.

When I was young, I ate Ho Hos every day.

Did you know that there was a study in 1961 that found that 90 percent of physicians wouldn't tell you if you were diagnosed with cancer?

My perfect weekend is going for a walk with my family in the park. I don't think there's anything better.

I did a lot of fun things before I had kids - I traveled a lot. Now, I just really love being with my kids.