“A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult.”

Bill and I both firmly believe that even the most difficult global health problems can be solved.

I went to business school, and I went straight from that to a nine-year career at Microsoft. Eventually, I ran a big chunk of the consumer products division for Microsoft.Then I left with the birth of our first daughter because Bill and I both wanted to have a few kids.

As a parent, the responsible thing to do – if you love your child – is to vaccinate your child.

Abortion has become a very politicised issue that I think countries have to work out themselves. In a lot of countries, people can’t even yet agree on what their laws should be.

If we don’t empower women, we don’t allow them to unlock the potential of themselves and their children.

Our economies are built on the backs of all this unpaid labor that women do.

Sometimes it’s the people you can’t help who inspire you the most.

If you can’t travel to the developing world, look at helping to fund a woman with a small loan and follow her. Learn her story. Learn about the difference that you’re making.

In different places you run into myths around vaccination or around family planning. In the United States, one of the myths that existed for a long time, that has been completely debunked, was that autism was linked to a vaccine.

I felt suicidal. I couldn’t stop crying. I remember thinking, wouldn’t it be great if the car crashed and I died?

Birth control has almost completely and totally disappeared from the global health agenda, and the victims of this paralysis are the people of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

We have to be careful in how we use this light shined on us.

Take time to learn about the lives of women around the world-and try to play a small part in their fight to create the future they deserve.

Connect deeply with others. Our humanity is the one thing that we all have in common.

Our desire to bring every good thing to our children is a force for good throughout the world. It’s what propels societies forward.

Poverty disproportionately affects women around the world.

It is difficult for the common good to prevail against the intense concentration of those who have a special interest, especially if the decisions are made behind locked doors.

It is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of many of our religious traditions.

It is not particularly difficult to find thousands who will spend two or three hours a day in exercising, but if you ask them to bend their knees to God in five minutes of prayer they protest that it is too long.

When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from Him; but in heaven’s name to what?

Any difficulties which the world faces today will be as nothing compared to the full effects which global warming will have on the world-wide economy.

Bigger films are more difficult because the number of people is so huge.

With the right person, everything will always be okay. Even if it is difficult, you never have a question about it. You just patiently there and wait, because you know the answer for the best.

It’s a difficult thing when you try and make a film of a book that you really love. You have about two hours to tell the story, and it’s never going to be enough.