“You’ve solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.”

A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.

Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.

The best book on programming for the layman is Alice in Wonderland, but that’s because it’s the best book on anything for the layman.

Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.

A picture is worth 10K words – but only those to describe the picture.

Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

When someone says, “I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done,” give him a lollipop.

C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.

Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.

It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than to have 10 functions operate on 10 data structures.

We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines.

In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.

There is no such thing as a free variable.

Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.

It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.

In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.

I love life. But it is hard and I have so much, so very much to learn.

How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.

I’m a hard guy to live with. I’m like a caged animal. I’m up all night walking around the living room. It’s hard for me to come down from what I do.

You don’t have to swing hard to hit a home run. If you got the timing, it’ll go.

I know I’m a good professional, I know that no one’s harder on me than myself and that’s never going to change, under any circumstances.

It’s what I learn from the great actors that I work with. Stillness. That’s all and that’s the hardest thing.

Mortal fate is hard. You’d best get used to it.

You have to take the long hard look and just believe that if you’re consistent, you will succeed.