“He seemed unaware of what was going on, stared out without hope or ambition, without worry, developing a quality devoid of qualities to get him through this life.”

“Trevor possessed many of the qualities of a vampire without actually being one. He constantly preyed on me, was deeply charismatic, and tried to suck the life out of me.”

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

“Or if he takes whatever dull job he's stuck with -- and they are all, sooner or later, dull -- and, just to keep himself amused, starts to look for options of Quality, and secretly pursues these options, just for their own sake, thus making an art out of what he is doing, he's likely to discover that he becomes a much more interesting person and much less of an object to the people around him because his Quality decisions change him too. And not only the job and him, but others too because the Quality tends to fan out like waves. The Quality job he didn't think anyone was going to see is seen, and the person who sees it feels a little better because of it, and is likely to pass that feeling on to others, and in that way the Quality tends to keep on going.”

“Writing fiction is ... an endless and always defeated effort to capture some quality of life without killing it.”

“I worry whoever thought up the term 'quality control' thought if we didn't control it, it would get out of hand.”