In fact, my main conclusion after spending ten years of my life working on the T_EX project is that software is hard. It’s harder than anyt… - Donald Knuth

The whole thing that makes a mathematician’s life worthwhile is that he gets the grudging admiration of three or four colleagues.

In a way, you'd say my life is a convex combination of English and mathematics. ... And not only that, I want my kids to be that way: use left brain, right brain at the same time – you got a lot more done. That was part of the bargain.

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.