If you and I always agree, then one of us is redundant.

Younger hackers are hard to classify. They're probably just as diverse as the old hackers are. We're all over the map.

At many levels, Perl is a 'diagonal' language.

Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris.

For me, writing is a love-hate relationship.

Portability should be the default.

I think software patents are a bad idea. Many patents are given for trivial inventions.

Symmetry is overrated. Overrated is symmetry.

The Harvard Law states: Under controlled conditions of light, temperature, humidity, and nutrition, the organism will do as it damn well pleases.

Over the long term, symbiosis is more useful than parasitism. More fun, too. Ask any mitochondria.

Hubris itself will not let you be an artist.

Trust yourself more than you trust the words of others.

Surely of all ‘rights of man’, this right of the ignorant man to be guided by the wiser, to be, gently or forcibly, held in the true course by him, is the indisputablest.

If you don't have a spiritual practice in place when times are good, you can't expect to suddenly develop one during a moment of crisis.

I think that all things are spirit and are derived from spirit. When you look at life from that perspective, it takes on a whole new meaning.

I think of my books as mainstream and that's were most people who read them look for them in book stores.

Reduce US military presence in Iraq; and bring in neighbors.

I just shoot until I feel good.

Those who, in debate, appeal to their qualifications, argue from memory, not from understanding.

As a teenager, I was very much a people pleaser and that excludes being adventuresome at all. I was a Boy Scout though and so that's as adventuresome as I got.

My mom enlisted in the U.S. Navy in World War II, and my parents actually bought our home thanks to the loan she got through the GI Bill.