Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker
Torvalds to his mother, about his sister
2000s, (2001)
8 November 1943
Variant: If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl (1942 - 1944)
Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker
Torvalds to his mother, about his sister
2000s, (2001)
“It's strange because sometimes, I read a book, and I think I am the people in the book.”
Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States
On surviving a plane crash in 1951
Zmijewsky, Boris; Lee Pfeiffer (1982). The Films of Clint Eastwood. p. 16. Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press. .
“I am so tired of rearranging my life around what the stupidest people might do.”
Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian
The Golden Goose Special (1997)
James McBride (writer) (1957) American journalist
On letting his work speak regarding race and class in “James McBride Says Fiction Writing Allows Him More Freedom” https://www.npr.org/2017/10/01/554933082/james-mcbride-says-fiction-writing-allows-him-more-freedom in NPR (2017 Oct 1)
Abraham Pais (1918–2000) American Physicist
On life in hiding from Nazi authorities, p. 48
To Save a Life: Stories of Holocaust Rescue (2000)
Context: One of the things I learned, one of the strangest things, is how to think. There was nothing else to do. I couldn't see people, or go for a walk in the forest. All I had was my head and my books, and I thought a lot. I learned, because there was no interruption. I had access to myself, to my thinking. I wouldn't say that I particularly matured. The thinking was physics thinking. I was just short of twenty-two then.
I was in hiding for two years and two months, something like that. In all that time I went out very, very little, just once in a great while, after dark. Once I even took the train to Utrecht, forty miles from Amsterdam, with my yellow star, this star which I still have. Why did I go? I just wanted to visit some friends. I was a little bit crazy, a little bit insane.
“It's a good thing I'm a reasonably patient woman. Otherwise, I might have to kill you.”
Lora Leigh (1965) American writer
Source: Wicked Pleasure