C is not clean – the language has many gotchas and traps, and although its semantics are simple in some sense, it is not any cleaner than the assembly-language design it is based on.

It's not that Perl programmers are idiots, it's that the language rewards idiotic behavior in a way that no other language or tool has ever done.

Norway did not even have a revolution at the time the rest of Europe was busy figuring out human rights and stuff, because we were busy fighting over how to spell it.

We have no mom-and-pop oil rigs in Norway.

Part of any serious QA is removing Perl code the same way you go over a dilapidated building you inherit to remove chewing gum and duct tape and fix whatever was kept together for real.

it's just that in C++ and the like, you don't trust anybody, and in CLOS you basically trust everybody. The practical result is that thieves and bums use C++ and nice people use CLOS.

I guess there are some things that are so gross you just have to forget, or it'll destroy something within you. Perl is the first such thing I have known.

That's why the smartest companies use Common Lisp, but lie about it so all their competitors think Lisp is slow and C++ is fast.

Life is hard, and then you die.

Well, take it from an old hand: the only reason it would be easier to program in C is that you can't easily express complex problems in C, so you don't.

Unformed people delight in the gaudy and in novelty. Cooked people delight in the ordinary.

I'm feeling grand. I'm on a rollercoaster only going up.

Her children arise up and call her blessed.

To breathe Paris is to preserve one's soul.

I taught writing classes at the University of Pennsylvania for a number of years and I realized that all you can do is encourage people and give them assignments and hope they will write them.

He who believes in nobody knows that he himself is not to be trusted.

Every temptation is an offer to doubt God's love and wisdom.

Since when are Egyptians not white? All I know are.

If not excellence, what? If not excellence now, when?

I'm really quite happy to say that in my early 40s, I wake up feeling sexy, and I can't say I felt that way in my late 20s.

When I write, I love finding connections between ideas. When the connections are plentiful and strong, then I know it's a pretty good subject to write about.