“It is these wants and these desires that attract them towards you, and that make them submit to you: were it not for these, they would not even look at you”

“There are the goods; if you want them, you can have them. If you do not want them, they would almost rather that you did not come and talk about them.”

“The great trouble with all of us who are struggling with unhappy or unfortunate conditions is that we have separated ourselves in some way from the great magnetic center of creation. We are not thinking right, and so we are not attracting the right things. “Think the things you want.” The profoundest philosophy is locked up in these few words. Think of them clearly, persistently, concentrating upon them with all the force and might of your mind, and struggle toward them with all your energy. This is the way to make yourself a magnet for the things you want. But the moment you begin to doubt, to worry, to fear, you demagnetize yourself, and the things you desire flee from you. You drive them away by your mental attitude. They cannot come near you while you are deliberately separating yourself from them. You are going in one direction, and the things you want are going in the opposite direction.”

“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.”

“But, Corbet, there were things—between us—”
“You imagined many of them. You wanted them to be true, and so they were. But only to you.”

“The first duty towards children is to make them happy. If you have not made them so, you have wronged them. No other good they may get can make up for that.”

“Wanting and waiting will keep you away from your desires, actions will bring you closer to them.”

“Based on her experience with men, most assumed that when you talked to them about a problem or dilemma, they were expected to offer an opinion, even when all you wants was for them to listen.”

“Some stories stayed with you even when you wanted to forget them.”

“You have questions—urgent questions—I know that. And what makes them urgent is that you have in your mind the answers you want to hear. You will be more and more angry if you do not get those answers, but some can’t be given as you would hear them, because they would not be true.”