Walter Mosley Quotes

The effective exploitation of his powers of abstraction must be regarded as one of the most vital activities of a competent programmer.

Learning to write programs stretches your mind, and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that I think is helpful in all domains.

A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.

Everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think.

When you compose, it's like writing. You're like a writer. You just think all the time.

I think there are a lot of similarities between writing and music. Music is much more direct and much more emotional and that's the level I want to be at when I'm writing. Writing is much more intellectual and indirect and abstract, in a way.

Had I to give advice to writers (and I do not think they need it, because everyone has to find out things for himself), I would tell them simply this; I would ask them to tamper as little as they can with their own work. I do not think tinkering does any good. The moment comes when one has found out what one can do - when one has found one's natural voice, one's rhythm. Then I do not think that slight emendations should prove useful.

Honestly, I don't try to guess at what most people want. I don't think I'd guess right, and I just think that that's not a good recipe for storytelling. I try to write what I like, what I think my friends would like.

I don't think I write differently when I'm writing a screenplay, as opposed to a stage play or a teleplay. Maybe if I were in a film class and there was time to think about it, we could point out differences.

I don't think comedians make an active decision to be a certain "persona." Comedians write the way they're going to write.

It's funny how that comes up, because sometimes I'll write something and I'll think, I don't know if that's a film or a play, and then other things I feel very strongly about them just being plays - they feel very theatrical to me.

I haven't had writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly.

I like to write things to be personal, so I just put what I'm thinking about at the time.

Code is not like other how-computers-work books. It doesn't have big color illustrations of disk drives with arrows showing how the data sweeps into the computer. Code has no drawings of trains carrying a cargo of zeros and ones. Metaphors and similes are wonderful literary devices but they do nothing but obscure the beauty of technology.

I think that it's worthwhile to explore the ways in which you write the person that's writing your plays as opposed to simply assuming that it's all a natural process and there's no design in it. Because your public persona is designed, to a certain extent, and you can have fun and profit at various times doing that.

A lot of people consider my books to be straightforward, but I think that I write from atmosphere to atmosphere rather than from event to event.

Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.

The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music.

But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper.

I think I'm too lazy a writer to do something like historical fiction. You have to do so much research. I just write what I know.

I think everyone should get a little exposure to computer science because it really forces you to think in a slightly different way, and it's a skill that you can apply in life in general, whether you end up in computer science or not.

I tend to write pretty much by myself. I always did that anyway. I used to write with Ron Strykert 'cause he was the only guitarist and we played well together. We lived in the same place. I would play a certain style and he would kind of dance around what I did, in a sense. I learned from him and also vice-versa. With this band, I think I bounce ideas off everybody. Perhaps on the next album they'll be more collaborative stuff, but for the last 2-3 years, I've been pretty well writing by myself.

When I'm writing, especially when I'm writing in first person, I don't think about the characterization, or how they are going to express themselves, I just express my own approach to these things. I think most writers can never divorce themselves from their private lives and personas; they are the ones that are writing. And the more they remove themselves from their own persona, the more, perhaps, mechanical the work becomes.

Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.

If you are disappearing from yourself, but you're still writing, then there is a kind of activity of thinking going on, which in my world is similar to what's going on in music.