“Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.”

“The barriers between reality and fiction are softer than we think; a bit like a frozen lake. Hundreds of people can walk across it, but then one evening a thin spot develops and someone falls through; the hole is frozen over by the following morning.”

“most software- or systems-development projects start out without a context diagram, blissfully unaware that they need one.”

“Software development, like professional sports, has a way of making thirty-year-old men feel decrepit.”

“More importantly, our software worked. I don't just mean that it didn't bump, or that it performed according to the written specifications, or that it was efficient in producing reports. It really worked”

“They continued to watch each other from across the room, both frozen for a moment by the shadow of distant possibilities.”