Doing linear scans over an associative array is like trying to club someone to death with a loaded Uzi.
Larry Wall

For me, writing is a love-hate relationship.
Larry Wall

Hubris itself will not let you be an artist.
Larry Wall

I am not a sort of person who wants to run a company.
Larry Wall

I still drive my 1977 Honda Accord. The paint is almost all worn off. It's still running.
Larry Wall

I take time to watch anime. I don't know whether I'm allowed to, but I do it anyway.
Larry Wall

I talked about becoming stupid, but I've always been stupid. Fortunately I've been just smart enough to realize that I'm stupid.
Larry Wall

I think computer science, by and large, is still stuck in the Modern age.
Larry Wall

I think operating systems work best if they're free and open. Particular applications are more likely to be proprietary.
Larry Wall

I think software patents are a bad idea. Many patents are given for trivial inventions.
Larry Wall


I think the way IBM has embraced the open source philosophy has been quite astonishing, but gratifying. I hope they'll do very well with it.
Larry Wall

I want people to use Perl. I want to be a positive ingredient of the world and make my American history. So, whatever it takes to give away my software and get it used, that's great.
Larry Wall

I'm just paid to do whatever I want to do. Some of the time it's development, and some of the time it's just goofing off.
Larry Wall

I'm never satisfied because I've been always interested in too many things and I always want to do everything at once.
Larry Wall

If any ideology is so serious that you can't have fun while you're doing it, it's probably too serious.
Larry Wall

If you're a large corporation, you can afford to pay the money to register patents, but if you're an individual like me, you can't.
Larry Wall

Many days I don't write any code at all, and some days I spend all day writing code.
Larry Wall

One of the very basic ideas of Post-Modernism is rejection of arbitrary power structures. Different people are sensitive to different kinds of power structures.
Larry Wall

Perl was designed to work more like a natural language. It's a little more complicated but there are more shortcuts, and once you learned the language, it's more expressive.
Larry Wall

Post-Modernism was a reaction against Modernism. It came quite early to music and literature, and a little later to architecture. And I think it's still coming to computer science.
Larry Wall