I've always written. I'm from an older generation of programmers [who] did not come out of engineering. [A]ll sorts of people were drawn in from the social sciences and humanities.

The messiness cannot go into the program; it piles up around the programmer.

We build our computer (systems) the way we build our cities: over time, without a plan, on top of ruins

To be a programmer is to develop a carefully managed relationship with error. There's no getting around it. You either make your accomodations with failure, or the work will become intolerable.

Software engineering is not about right and wrong but only better and worse

But you can't stop knowing something, can you?

I don't know where anyone ever got the idea that technology, in and of itself, was a savior. Like all human-created 'progress, ' computers are problematic, giving and taking away.

People talk about computer programmers as if computers are our whole lives. That's simply not true.

Introduced in the 1960s, multitasking is an engineering strategy for making computers more efficient. Human beings are the slowest elements in a system.

Staring prejudice in the face imposes a cruel discipline: to structure your anger, to achieve a certain dignity, an angry dignity.

Her Uncle Jaime felt that people never read what did not interest them and that if it interested them that meant they were sufficiently mature to read it.

sometimes all we can crave is a heavenly place with no one around

The U.S. Constitution protects our privacy from the prying eyes of government. It does not, however, protect us from the prying eyes of companies and corporations.

One grows out of pity when it's useless.

Never diagnose a (client) until after their therapy is over.

I don't find any presidents all that sexy. They're not very rock'n'roll.

The whole object of my life has been to inculcate into Cornish people a sense of their Cornishness.

If you cannot measure it, then it is not science.

When the water is very calm and very beautiful, it won't take a long time that a thick head will throw a stone in it!

It is hard, if not impossible, to snub a beautiful woman - they remain beautiful and the snub recoils.