I don't think there are many people up in research who have strong ideas about things that they haven't really had experience with.

Just think, IBM and DEC in the same room, and we did it.

FORTRAN was the language of choice for the same reason that three-legged races are popular.

We have persistent objects, they're called files.

In fact, we started off with two or three different shells and the shell had life of its own.

For most of that time, I've also been a keen gardener, but for many years I failed to make the connection between gardening and science.

I think the major good idea in Unix was its clean and simple interface: open, close, read, and write.