The stories are not autobiographical, but they're personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I've learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

Algorithms are the poetry of computation. Every algorithm has a story to tell.

On progress: "If you're competitor-focused， you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering."

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.