“It's not to pretend you can do everything, but if people like you – in the sense of admiring or having respect for what you are trying to do – then they will understand the odd blemish. If people don't like you, and lack confidence in what you are trying to do, they won't forgive you anything.”

“About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won't like you at all.”

“You don't want to write a big comment that tells others how to make a change they might want to make, because you don't know what change they're going to want to make. Better to have the attitude that you can't help future programmers make their changes. All you can do is make it easy for them to understand what you were trying to do. And it will be easiest for them to understand what you were trying to do if you were very careful to not try to do too much.”

“I would like people to recognize in looking at my story that the person who has the most to do with what happens to you is you. It's not the environment, it's not the other people who were there trying to help you or trying to stop you. It's what you decide to do and how much effort you put behind it.”

“If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you”

“You have to try, you have to do everything you can.”

“If you keep on working and you don't tell people what you are doing, they lose confidence.”

“Try it. You don't have to do it ever again if you don't want to. But try it once. Try everything once.”

“Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like.”

“What we do attracts to a certain type of people. I don't think age has anything to do with it: either you get into it or you don't. You can be 16 or 60 and you will like us or not depending on your sensibilities.”