Code Quotes
Crazyhorse, a literary journal, just released a list of “quick-quotes” about poetry. After reading through them, I realized that, by swapping out “writing” and/or “poetry” with “programming” and/or “code,” you get some pretty interesting sentiments:
“What I like in a good [programmer] is not what he [writes], but what he whispers.”
—Logan Pearsall Smith
“We are all [n00bs] in a craft where no one ever becomes a [pwn4r].”
—Ernest Hemingway
“The [coder]: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.”
—Theodore Roethke
“If there is a special Hell for [programmers] it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works.”
—John Dos Passos
“I [code] a little every day, without hope and without despair."
—Isak Dinesen
"[Code], damn you! What else are you good for?"
—James Joyce
"If I don’t [program] to empty my mind I go mad."
—Lord Byron
"[Coding] is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein."
—Red Smith
"[Coding] is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant."
—Winston Churchill
"Always pull back—and see how silly we must look to [Steve Jobs]."
—Jack Kerouac
"The end of all our exploring will be to arrive when we started and know the place for the first time."
—T.S. Eliot
"If you’re a good [coder], these days, you pay attention to the way that people don’t pay attention."
—Charles Baxter
"There are three rules to [coding] and nobody knows what they are."
—Wm. Somerset Maugham
"We put on our [codes] before our clothes…."
—William Wenthe
"All I am is the trick of [codes] [coding] themselves."
—Anne Sexton
"When one is highly alert to [coding], then nearly everything begs to be a [piece of software]..."
—James Tate
"Remember the old adage about how an infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually type something beautiful? Well, the Internet disproves that."
—Kurt Vonnegut
"The [coder] is he that hath fat enough, like bears and marmots, to suck his claws all winter. He hibernates in this world, and feeds on his own marrow."
—Henry David Thoreau
"A [programmer] is a fool to become a [programmer]. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it."
—Roald Dahl
"You must stay drunk on [coding] so reality cannot destroy you."
—Ray Bradbury
"If you can bring nothing to this place but your carcass, keep out."
—William Carlos Williams
"Why do I [code]? To discover the Gods I don't believe in"
—Bruce Pratt
"Substitute '[var damn]' every time you are inclined to write '[var ...]' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."
—Mark Twain
"The process of [coding] will always be trying to repair something that doesn't exist with tools you have to invent on the spot."
—George Saunders
"Any [coder] who knows what he's doing isn't doing very much."
—Nelson Algren
"An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An [coder] says a hard thing in a simple way."
—Charles Bukowski
"[Coding] isn't about applause. It's about humiliation."
—Steve Almond
"Before I start [coding] I feel affectionate, interested, and frustrated. In that order. Afterwards I feel relieved, disgusted, and confused. Sometimes I don't think it's worth it."
—Joy Williams
"I believe in [code]. I believe that [codes] are little gods. I believe that [programs] are bibles."
—Marcel Pomerlo
"[Coders] think they are pitchers, but they are really catchers."
—Jack Spicer
"If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster."
—Isaac Asimov
"The [coder's] task is to synchronize thoughts, images, raw creative material in a meaningful way, a task as difficult and frantic and joyful as herding cats."
—Brandon Dorn
"I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than [parsing] sentences."
—Gertrude Stein
"[Coding] is mostly hunches."
—John Ashberry
"…you can kill [chars] only once, but you can hurt them everyday."
—Neil LaBute
"Use the right [method] and not its second cousin."
—Mark Twain
"Go forth my [code] and help to destroy the world as it is."
— Russell Banks
"Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing."
—Georgia O'Keefe
"It's hell [coding] and it's hell not [coding]. The only tolerable state is having just [coded]."
—Robert Hass
"This morning I took out a [variable], and this afternoon I put it back again."
— Oscar Wilde
"I [code] for myself and strangers."
—Gertrude Stein
"[Code] is my love, my postmark, my hands, my kitchen, my face."
—Anne Sexton
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