Growing up, I was always enthralled by Ronnie Barker. He made my dad howl with laughter, which always intrigued me, and he had the rare gift of being as good a performer as he was a writer.

It's because finance is so baffling that makes being an economist such a safe option. It nestles down comfortably with psychiatry and astrology as a profession where getting it patently wrong is just not a problem - and also, rather wonderfully, seems to have no adverse affect on their professional standing whatsoever.

As a parent, I often wonder what I should be encouraging my kids to do for a career.

My job is to make people laugh. If I've upset them instead, then I haven't done my job properly.

I have a discipline that has served me very well in my career and in my personal life... and that's gotten stronger as I've gotten older. I've always felt if I don't just have a natural knack for it, I will just out-discipline the competition if I have to - work harder than anybody else.

As a company, we have to be very transparent. We are in a business very related to finance, and I want this company to last long, and I want this company to be audited by everyone.

My father was a small-businessman, and if he didn't get up and go to work, there would be no business.

About half the people at Valve have run their own companies, so they always have the option not just to take a job at another game company, but to go start their own company. The question you always have to answer is, 'How are we making these people more valuable than they would be elsewhere?'