I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are too baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka as roughage.

You must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.

All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.

There's no such thing as a writer's block. If you're having trouble writing, well, pick up the pen and write. No matter what, keep that hand moving. Writing is really a physical activity.

If you invest in a girl or a woman, you are investing in everybody else.

My basic idea is that programming is the most powerful medium of developing the sophisticated and rigorous thinking needed for mathematics, for grammar, for physics, for statistics, for all the "hard" subjects.... In short, I believe more than ever that programming should be a key part of the intellectual development of people growing up.