Born on May 9th

"The most important thing about skating is that it teaches you to do the things you should do before you do the things you want to do."

"Those edges and turns teach control and discipline, just like finger exercises on the piano."

"When dubstep was big, Ubisoft told the composer for 'Far Cry 3' to make dubstep and to me that was really weird."

"With 'Minecraft,' I've started creating serene ambiance music. As the game went on to become famous, people started identifying me as the ambient music person, which I never actually thought I was."

"I didn't pretend that I was good at writing music, so I wrote terrible music, intentionally. As time went on, the terrible subsided, and I started getting good."

"The first time I saw 'Minecraft,' people wanted to have 8-bit style video game music. But I wanted to go around that and make something organic and partly electronic, partly acoustic, and see if that would be interesting."

"I started out being quite an eclectic composer, not quite sure where to fit in. I tried my hand a bit at everything, except perhaps music with lyrics."

"Production-wise, I've always stuck with Ableton Live and there's really no reason to switch to something else at this point."

"Being the composer of 'Minecraft' is basically like imagining the distance between earth and moon."

"I think everyone that creates has to cope with the fact that people actually don't give you money because they like you, but because they get something out of it."

"My music is not worth $2.5bn. And also, I'm not rich."

"Mojang doesn't want to just have work relationships, they want social relationships between friends."

"This new project, 'Excursions,' has been a trip down my own memory lane before 'Minecraft,' when I aspired to create music I could hear on a commute to dance to."

"Minecraft has a terrible sound engine. Imagine a looping sound file that plays for two seconds and then just starts over."

"I want to make sound effects for biomes. If you're walking along a river you hear the water, then in the forest you hear birds, but as night comes in, it becomes kind of weird, you can walk through a desert, a swamp, and the sounds merge and change with you."

"I was worried Microsoft would take my music. But ultimately I talked to the lawyers and I still own it."

"All the big loud housey songs came from the idea of 'I want to create the same song over and over again.' Except that I've created each one in a different location, or a different mindset."

"I'm a lousy writer, and it shows when I try to write poetry."

"Dreams are, by definition, cursed with short life spans."

"I've never felt more comfortable in my skin, I've never enjoyed life as much and I feel so lucky."

"People see you as an object, not as a person, and they project a set of expectations onto you. People who don't have it think beauty is a blessing, but actually it sets you apart."

"Though beauty gives you a weird sense of entitlement, it's rather frightening and threatening to have others ascribe such importance to something you know you're just renting for a while."

"Not that we didn't have close relationships with our parents - I'm very close to my mom - but parents didn't think anything of going off for a few weeks and leaving their kids."

"I admit that Post-it note sheets that adhere to virtually any surface are now my substitute of choice for retention."

"Memory is the first casualty of middle age, if I remember correctly."

"I remember being in tears at the hospital after Chloe was born, at the thought that someday she would have to leave home."

"I couldn't hold it together today. George Clooney asked me if I was OK, and I practically collapsed. I couldn't stop crying, I had to go off sobbing like an idiot."

"Self-acceptance has been a blessed by-product of middle age."

"Were women meant to do everything - work and have babies?"

"I believe a lot in monogamy, let me tell you."