“Writing is a lot like sex: at first you do it because you enjoy it. Then you find yourself doing it with others. But if you're any good at all, you end up doing it for less money than it's worth.”

“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.”

“You cannot enjoy others until you enjoy yourself because you cannot give to others what you do not have.”

“I know what the majority of you think about all this. All this sex and money and drugs. You think: people who live like that never end up happy. You need to think that in just the way men with small penises need to think size doesn't matter. It's understandable. The rich, the famous, the big-dicked, the slim-and-gorgeous - they can incite an envy so urgent that you can escape it only by translating it into pity. People who live like that never end up happy. Yes, you're right. But neither do you. And in the meantime, they've had all the sex and drugs and money.”

“Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.”

“There is all the more reason for startups to write Web-based software now, because writing desktop software has become a lot less fun. If you want to write desktop software now you do it on Microsoft's terms, calling their APIs and working around their buggy OS. And if you manage to write something that takes off, you may find that you were merely doing market research for Microsoft.”