More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined.

The Waterfall Model is wrong and harmful; we must outgrow it.

How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time.

Nine people can't make a baby in a month.

Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowcharts; they'll be obvious.

The fundamental problem with program maintenance is that fixing a defect has a substantial (20-50 percent) chance of introducing another. So the whole process is two steps forward and one step back.

System debugging has always been a graveyard-shift occupation, like astronomy.

A scientist builds in order to learn; an engineer learns in order to build.

The hardest single part of building a software system is deciding precisely what to build.

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later

System debugging, like astronomy, has always been done chiefly at night.

I cannot believe that you're still a girl. Your kisses don’t seem that innocent. They are driving me crazy.

Books can truly change our lives: the lives of those who read them, the lives of those who write them. Readers and writers alike discover things they never knew about the world and about themselves.

This is life! It can harden and it can exalt!

You can say battle or war or whatever, but in the end, it's music. It's not really violent in intent at all, it's really just about expression and celebrating that in itself.

What new technology does is create new opportunities to do a job that customers want done.

Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer, than into the dreams of a lustful woman?

I was lucky enough to be a "type." Sort of a bad-guy type at the time, because I was tall and I had dark eyes. A lot of times, you don't have to be good; you just have to be the right type.

If you're going to define a shortcut, then make it the base [sic] darn shortcut you can.

I remember going to the theatre when I was little and the lights going down and just getting really scared about what was going to happen up there.

I think when you talk about competing against others, the problem is that you refer to something that's been done already and try to beat it.