"The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia"
"I am grateful to Stacy Schiff first of all because she can write a sentence-because she offers us her scholarship with wit, clarity, and grace. Once again, she has done what only the best writers can do: she has made the world new, again."
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Source: Tracy Kidder (1982). “The soul of a new machine”, Avon Books
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"Writing is revision. All prose responds to work."
"Don't worry about being worried. You're heading out on an adventure and you can always change your mind along the way and try something else."
"You do the right thing even if it makes you feel bad. The purpose of life is not to be happy but to be worthy of happiness."
"In the early days, computers inspired widespread awe and the popular press dubbed them giant brains. In fact, the computer's power resembled that of a bulldozer; it did not harness subtlety, though subtlety went into its design."
"Most teachers have little control over school policy or curriculum or choice of texts or special placement of students, but most have a great deal of autonomy inside the classroom. To a degree shared by only a few other occupations, such as police work, public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid."