He Had Some Quirks Larry would sometimes take time out to think. He would just disappear for a few days, often without telling Larry Ellison, Oracle’s founder

He Had Some Quirks Larry would sometimes take time out to think. He would just disappear for a few days, often without telling Larry Ellison, Oracle’s founder and CEO, was brilliant, driven, witty, charming, ruthless, wildly egoistical, a superb salesman, a notorious womanizer—and a seriously random number. Anything could happen, and often did. For example, one fine day I was part of a group that had a late-morning meeting with Larry. When we convened at his office, he wasn’t there. This was not unusual. Larry has just acquired a new wife—his third—and he apparently liked to go home during the day to make love with her. But our meeting was important, so we piled into a car and took off for his new house in Woodside. My manager, a former classical cellist who was stunned by Larry’s behavior as I was, turned to me in the car and said, “And now, we journey to the land where time has no meaning”. When we arrived, Larry came to the door, tousled but in good humor, and invited us into a huge house devoid of furniture, at least on the first floor, where we transacted our business and left. […] But although Larry was a nice planet to visit, I didn’t want to live there. In six months at Oracle I had five different managers, the last of whom was a former CIA agent who was much crazier than Larry was, but nasty and not half as bright. — High Stakes, No Prisoners : A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars by Charles H. Ferguson