“The nerd flavor of masculinity has overwhelmed the macho kind in real-life power dynamics, and therefore in popular culture.”

“The nerd flavor of masculinity has overwhelmed the macho kind in real-life power dynamics, and therefore in popular culture.”

“But now what? Is this a ticket to a new understanding of my life, or a bomb that's going to blow up everything?Consider one more possibility: that you remain essentially the same person you were, neither new nor destroyed.”

“The corollary of constant change is ignorance. This is not often talked about: we computer experts barely know what we're doing. We're good at fussing and figuring out. We function well in a sea of unknowns. Our experience has only prepared us to deal with confusion. A programmer who denies this is probably lying, or else is densely unaware of himself.”

“I had this idea we would have ordered some good champagne, launched toast after toast to our humanity, which after all had created everything: the opportunities for the bug, the bug itself, and its solution. I think now it might have changed us, softened our failures, made us feel we belonged to—had a true stake in—those lives full of code we had separately stumbled into. I like to think it would have reassured him, saved him: To know that at the heart of the problem was the ancient mystery of time. To discover that between the blinks of the machine’s shuttered eye—going on without pause or cease; simulated, imagined, but still not caught—was life.”

“I believed my motivations were clear: to help the patient see the pattern that had been imposed upon her, this endless repetition of being selected yet judged to be not exactly what was wanted, a purchase the buyer wished to return.”

“Do I have to recite any further risks you have taken? How much you have not conformed? How much internal bravery this implies?”