People imagine that programming is logical, a process like fixing a clock. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It is one thing for an artist to experiment on a canvas, but it's entirely different to experiment on a living creature.

I'm in no way saying that women can't take a tough code review. I'm saying that no one should have to take one in a boy-puerile atmosphere.

When I hear the word 'disruption,' in my mind, I think of all these people in the middle who were earning a living. We will sweep away all that money they were earning, and we will move that to the people at the top.

The world of programmers is not going to change on its own.

What I hope is that those with the knowledge of the humanities break into the closed society where code gets written: invade it.

I fear for the world the Internet is creating.

Even simple fixes can bring the whole system down.

My mother told me that my birth mother got pregnant by a married man who didn't want to leave his wife.

Closed environments dominated the computing world of the 1970s and early '80s. An operating system written for a Hewlett-Packard computer ran only on H.P. computers; I.B.M. controlled its software from chips up to the user interfaces.

Writing is a very isolating occupation.

When I am around people I most admire, I tend to hug the wall.

I'm pretty bad at crying.

No one in the government is seriously penalized when Social Security numbers are stolen and misused; only the number-holders suffer.

When you lose your Visa card, you get a new card with a new number, and any new charges with the old number are blocked. Why can't we do the same with Social Security numbers?

The questions I am often asked about my career tend to concentrate not on how one learns to code but how a woman does.

I don't know where anyone ever got the idea that technology, in and of itself, was a savior. Like all human-created 'progress,' computers are problematic, giving and taking away.

Truly new inventions take time to play out.

What happens to people like myself, who have been involved with computing for a long time, is that you begin to see how many of the 'new' ideas are simply old ones coming back into view on the swing of the pendulum, with new and faster hardware to back it up.

It will not work to keep asking men to change. Many have no real objective to do so. There's no reward for them. Why should they change? They're doing well inside the halls of coding.

I was a girl who came into the clubhouse, into the treehouse, with the sign on the door saying, 'No girls allowed,' and the reception was not always a good one.

When I am writing, and occasionally achieve single focus and presence, I finally feel that is where I'm supposed to be. Everything else is kind of anxiety.

With every advance, you have to look over your shoulder and know what you're giving up - look over your shoulder and look at what falls away.

You can only get a beginner's mind once.