Once you get to naming your laptop, you know that you're really having a deep relationship with it.

Stop in the middle of a sentence, leaving a rough edge for you to start from the nest day - that way, you can write three or five words without being “creative” and before you know it, you're writing.

This is why I loved technology: if you used it right, it could give you power and privacy.

The opposite of esprit d'escalier is the way that life's embarrassments come back to haunt us even after they're long past. I could remember every stupid thing I'd ever said or done, recall them with picture-perfect clarity. Any time I was feeling low, I'd naturally start to remember other times I felt that way, a hit parade of humiliations coming one after another to my mind.

All secrets become deep. All secrets become dark. That's in the nature of secrets.

Digital Distribution and the Whip Hand: Don't Get iTunesed with your eBooks

Engineers are all basically high-functioning autistics who have no idea how normal people do stuff.