My first program taught me a lot about the errors that I was going to be making in the future, and also about how to find errors. That's sort of the story of my life, making errors and trying to recover from them. I try to get things correct. I probably obsess about not making too many mistakes.

The important thing, once you have enough to eat and a nice house, is what you can do for others, what you can contribute to the enterprise as a whole.

The whole thing that makes a mathematician’s life worthwhile is that he gets the grudging admiration of three or four colleagues.

Always remember, however, that there’s usually a simpler and better way to do something than the first way that pops into your head.

How can you own numbers? Numbers belong to the world.

I define UNIX as 30 definitions of regular expressions living under one roof.

I can’t go to a restaurant and order food because I keep looking at the fonts on the menu.