Yquotes.com

 

Writing a portable OS is not much harder than a nonportable one, and all systems should be written with portability in mind these days.
--
In a Usenet message, 3 Feb 1992

 

Andrew S. Tanenbaum

» Andrew S. Tanenbaum - all quotes »

Similar quotes

 

Bad writing days are days when you mean to write and can't, or are interrupted so frequently that nothing gets done. I'm disheartened at how often I see the blogs of aspiring writers bemoaning how slowly a book or story is coming along. They have somehow gotten it in their heads that writing is a thing done quickly, efficiently, like an assembly line with lots of shiny robotic workers. The truth, of course, is that writing is usually slow, and inefficient, and more like trying to find a cube of brown Jello that someone's carelessly dropped into a pig sty. Five hundred words in a day is good. So is a thousand. Or fifteen hundred. A good writing day is a day when one has written well, and the word counts be damned. Finishing is not the goal. Doing the job well is the goal. And I say that as someone with no means of financial support but her writing, as someone who is woefully underpaid for her writing, and as someone with so many deadlines breathing down her neck that she can no longer tell one breather from the other. Sometimes, I forget this, that daily word counts are irrelevant, that writing is not a race to the finish line. One need only write well if one wishes to be a writer. A day when one does not do her best merely so that more may be written, that's a bad writing day.

 

Caitlin R. Kiernan

 

[a mobile phone rings] If you have a portable surveillance and tracking device, please turn it off. They have already tracked you in here, they already know you are listening to me; so, there is no need for you to keep it on. And by the way, these portable tracking devices emit signals for tracking purposes even when they are apparently switched off; the only way to stop them is to take out all the batteries. And if they want to listen, they don't have to do it through your portable surveillance device, I expect recordings will be posted they can listen to those, and they are even welcome to come and attend. So there is absolutely no reason why your portable tracking and surveillance device has to be on.

 

Richard M. Stallman

 

It's getting harder and harder to think out loud. One of these days someone's gonna go off and kill Thomas a'Becket for me...

 

Larry Wall

 

Now I must, I suppose, explain why I have been writing this account. [...] I have written to disclose myself to myself, and I am writing now because I will, I know, sometime read what I am now writing and wonder. Perhaps by the time I do, I will have solved the mystery of myself, or perhaps I will no longer care to know the solution.

 

Gene Wolfe

 

Seymour Stein: "I was in the hospital, I had her come see me in the hospital, we talked a deal in the hospital and we did the deal in the hospital. Within days, even before I got out of the hospital, she was starting to record what became her first single, Everybody, and we were off and running. I saw her staunch determination and I knew she would work as hard as I did and much harder, in fact. And that's what you need in an artist. She worked harder than anybody. I just saw her perform in Berlin, and she still works harder than anybody."

 

Madonna Ciccone