Demarco Quotes & Sayings

Dr. DeMarco nodded, motioning toward Carmine. "I'm thankful for the Mazda - damn thankful you didn't return it scratched," he said, glaring at his father. "I'm thankful to be out of that ridiculous boarding school. Thankful for music and my gun ... I fucking love my gun." Haven looked at him with surprise as Dr. DeMarco laughed. "It's a nice gun. I checked it out. A 1911 .45 ACP. Where'd you get it?"
Carmine shrugged. "Maybe I don't recall." "Fair enough," Dr. DeMarco said. "Are you done?" "Uh, I'm thankful for you all, even if you get on my nerves sometimes," Carmine said. "Oh, and orgasms ... definitely thankful for those." "That's enough," Dr. DeMarco said, shaking his head as he turned to her. "What are you thankful for, child?" She hesitated, her nerves running amuck. "Having food to eat. A bed to sleep in, too. — J.M. Darhower

A lot of the songs on '2' are pretty personal, but even if I'm writing about something like that, I still tend to keep it pretty simple and open-ended. I like the idea of people listening to my album and it meaning something to me but maybe meaning something else to them. — Mac DeMarco

Bodies pressed together, she could feel his pulse, blood furiously rushing through his veins. "Your heart," she whispered. "It's racing."
"You feel it?" he asked. "You hear it?"
"Yes."
"What's it saying?"
She smiled, her eyes fluttering closed. "It's saying you love me."
"I do," he said. "No matter what. Sempre. — J.M. Darhower

The QSM Software Almanac is an invaluable resource. It establishes a norm for software projects, including best of class, worst of class and averages. In addition, it profiles the state of the art of software construction and enhancement. I wish I'd had this wonderful reference book years ago. — Tom DeMarco

This time, there are no tears. This time, there is only emptiness and I feel it set in the straight line of my mouth. I am not strong enough for this. I want an earthquake, a hurricane, anything - even a devil, the one with the cloven hoof - Mrs. Leed's unfortunate 13th child - to rush out and stomp on me, break me into little pieces and hurl me to the stars, let me go back with those people I love. Please. — Kathleen DeMarco

When you play a guitar for a long time, you get your hand oils in there; it starts feeling good and behaving, and you just don't want to mess with that. — Mac DeMarco

I'm not really good at writing sad sappy ballads. In terms of the lyrics not matching the vibe of the music, that's kind of the way my career has gone; everyone is a little confused about it all the time. — Mac DeMarco

Patience is important, and also, if you don't want to do it, don't do it. But if you do, do. That's a general rule in how I live my life. — Mac DeMarco

Sound is so important to creative writing. Think of the sounds you hear that you include and the similes you use to describe what things sound like. 'As she walked up the alley, her polyester workout pants sounded like windshield wipers swishing back and forth.' Cadence, onomatopoeia, the poetry of language are all so important. Learn all that you can about how to bring sound into your work. — Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

A single person acting alone is not likely to effect any meaningful change. — Tom DeMarco

Lack of power is a great excuse for failure, but sufficient power is never a necessary condition of leadership. There is never sufficient power. In fact, it is success in the absence of sufficient power that defines leadership. — Tom DeMarco

I hate living in a really small apartment, living in a shoebox, not being able to play the drums, not having space. It sucks. — Mac DeMarco

Perfectionist? That's not something I am. — Mac DeMarco

I like guitar. It just turned out that it's the instrument I learned to play. I have a lot of respect for it, and I'm learning more and more every day. For me, the classic band setup - guitars, drums, bass - will stay fresh forever. I don't know. I'm still into it. — Mac DeMarco

Good night, my hummingbird," Carmine whispered. "I'll keep you in my dreams. — J.M. Darhower

Some of the most flowery praise you hear on the subject of teams is only hypocrisy. Managers learn to talk a good game about teams even when they're secretly threatened by the whole concept. — Tom DeMarco

In order to enable change, companies have to learn that keeping managers busy is a blunder. If you have busy managers working under you, they are an indictment of your vision and your capacity to transform that vision into reality. Cut them some slack. — Tom DeMarco

Quality is free, but only to those who are willing to pay heavily for it. — Tom DeMarco

Pick up any book about personal finance and you're likely to read a 200-page mind-fuck about being cheap. Of course, these books don't overtly say, "Be cheap," but hide behind slippery phrases like "the simple life" or "frugal living." Some — MJ DeMarco

The manager's function is not to make people work, it is to make it possible for people to work. — Tom DeMarco

I'll probably have to open a recording studio at some point because I won't be able to pay the bills. — Mac DeMarco

What I call bankruptcy of inventiveness is often the result of a failure to set aside the resources necessary to let invention happen. The principal resource needed for invention is slack. When companies can't invent, it's usually because their people are too damn busy. — Tom DeMarco

I live like a scumbag, but it's cheap. — Mac DeMarco

The songs that I'm able to write are the songs I'm able to write, whatever they may be. The path I've cut for myself is pop music - love-y pop music. That's what I enjoy doing. And I don't think I'm going to get sick of it anytime soon. — Mac DeMarco

Usually when festivals are really huge it's kind of weird. It's totally fun for me and my band to play in front of a crowd that doesn't necessarily know who we are, but festivals get pretty impersonal when they get super large. — Mac DeMarco

My music is kind of laid back, it doesn't have super crispy, shiny production, and I'm not singing my heart out or whatever. But that whole idea of blogs declaring: "this is the new denomination for this sound" is ridiculous to me. — Mac DeMarco

Healthy companies know that they have to allow people to fail without assessing blame. They have to do that or else no one will take on anything that's not a sure bet. Healthy companies know that, but Culture of Fear companies do not. In a Culture of Fear company, failure must be rewarded with punishment. ("What would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear?") A typical punishment is that you get fired. If the people above you are insufficiently powerful, some of them may get fired as well. This creates a powerful incentive to pass responsibility for failure on by blaming someone outside the organization. — Tom DeMarco

A lot of people assume I have a great hat collection, but kids steal my hats at every show. I've had all these hats that I've loved, but now they're in some little kids' possession. It's difficult to replenish. I don't think the kids realize this. — Mac DeMarco

Organizational busy work tends to expand to fill the working day. — Tom DeMarco

Neil Young is the prime example, the grand goal, if you will. He's still shredding, and he never lost his credibility. — Mac DeMarco

Slackless organizations tend to be authoritarian. When efficiency is the principal goal, decision making can't be distributed. It has to be in the hands of one person (or a few), with everyone else taking direction without question and acting quickly to carry out orders. This is a fine formula for getting a lot done, but a dismal way to encourage reinvention and learning. — Tom DeMarco

Whether you call it a "team" or an "ensemble" or a "harmonious work group" is not what matters; — Tom DeMarco

Once a song comes out, these songs aren't mine. They're everybody's. So there you go. — Mac DeMarco

I think people do expect something a little weird to happen. Maybe they've seen something I did once on the Internet and expect that I'm gonna do that every night. — Mac DeMarco

The pathology of setting a deadline to the earliest articulable date essentially guarantees that the schedule will be missed. — Tom DeMarco

I love Jonathan Richman - I love a lot of his music, and the thing I really like about him is his attitude. He seems very happy, and the way he performs is like, 'Don't worry, everybody, just get into it. I'm just having fun; I like when you guys are having fun.' — Mac DeMarco

I'm just trying to have fun, and maybe the way I hold myself kind of freaks people out. I don't feel like an outsider, and I think my friends feel the same way I do. Now that we're playing to larger audiences, maybe we're weird to some people. But I'm trying to express what I am. — Mac DeMarco

Debt needs a constant drip of blood, and that blood comes from your gas tank of life: time. And since time is fixed, an increase in indentured time comes from only one source: your free time. — M.J. DeMarco

If people are talking about you, that's great. You start making more money, that's great. You get to go to weird places, that's great. The music industry is weird, especially with the Internet. People are calling you all kinds of weird stuff, like 'jangly.' — Mac DeMarco

I've been trying to take the high road, you know, the Capone way ... — J.M. Darhower

Meaningful acts of leadership usually cause people to accept some short-term pain (extra cost or effort, delayed gratification) in order to increase the long-term benefit. We need leadership for this, because we all tend to be short-term thinkers. — Tom DeMarco

I had a band called the Sound Of Love, and that was R&B songs about girls in my high school. I played in some other indie bands who were trying to make it big; those sucked. Then I started Makeout Videotape, and that was that. — Mac DeMarco

Product quality has almost nothing to do with defects or their lack. — Tom DeMarco

I'm terrible at collaborating with people; nothing ever ends up coming out good. — Mac DeMarco

we don't work overtime so much to get the work done on time as to shield ourselves from blame when the work inevitably doesn't get done on time. — Tom DeMarco

The second danger of derivatives is that your love becomes vulnerable to contamination when you do it for money. If you are forced to do anything, even something you purport to love, in exchange for a paycheck, that love is put in danger. Years ago, I took a job as a limo driver because I loved to drive. By the time that job ended, I hated to drive. After work, I'd stay home because I was so sick of driving. My love was contaminated. — M.J. DeMarco

The purpose of a team is not goal attainment but goal alignment. — Tom DeMarco

Rituals help us change modes. — Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

Any vigorous competition will entail at least two elements: offense and defense. Offense is the effort you put into scoring against your opponents, and defense is the effort you apply to stop them from scoring against you. Those who suggest that "a little healthy competition can't hurt" are thinking only of the offense part....

The offense component of internal competition is problematic, but the defense component is always injurious. When peer managers play defense against each other (try to stop each other from scoring), they are engaging in anticooperation. — Tom DeMarco

The way I'm portrayed on the Internet is partly my doing, but it's partly the people that are presenting it so, you know, people come to know this strange version of a human. It can be pretty weird because people think I'm digging through dumpsters and smell like crap all the time. — Mac DeMarco

I've recorded at home since I was a teenager, and I'm able to sit here in my underwear and keep trying different things until something works. I think if I did that in a studio the engineer would be like, "What the hell is wrong with you?" — Mac DeMarco

There are a million ways to lose a work day, but not even a single way to get one back. — Tom DeMarco

The statistics about reading are particularly discouraging: The average software developer, for example, doesn't own a single book on the subject of his or her work, and hasn't ever read one. — Tom DeMarco

I'm paraphrasing, but yeah, a friend out of the Chicago organization did." "Chicago? You tried planting your seed in the DeMarco family? — J.M. Darhower

Ownership of the standard should be in the hands of those who do the work. — Tom DeMarco

Overworked managers are doing things they shouldn't be doing. — Tom DeMarco

It's so crazy now with the Internet and being able to play shows to people who are actually interested in you. I still feel so lucky when that happens. Things just happen so fast. — Mac DeMarco

Ron Carlson says, 'The most undervalued craft device that fiction writers need is empathy. You need to be able to actually imagine what your characters are going through. You've got to stay close. When you're in a story and dealing with people you're not certain of, or you've just come to meet because they've stepped into your story, it's very important to go slow and sit in their chair.'
As Carlson also says, you don't have to love the people or the characters you write about, but they should be at least as smart as you. Look beyond stereotypes. — Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

IBM actually followed the recommendations and built a workplace where people can work. (We predict this company will go far.) — Tom DeMarco

Productivity has to be defined as benefit divided by cost. The benefit is observed dollar savings and revenue from the work performed, and cost is the total cost, including replacement of any workers used up by the effort. — Tom DeMarco

Paradoxically, the fear of breaking your neck (translation in corporate terms: losing your job) does not make change impossible. It's a much more insidious kind of fear that interferes with change: the fear of mockery. If you want to make change in your organization utterly impossible, try mocking people as they struggle with the new, unfamiliar ways you have just urged upon them. There is no surer way to stop essential change dead. The safety that is required for essential change is a sure sense that no one will be mocked, demeaned, or belittled while struggling to achieve renewed mastery. — Tom DeMarco

Your choices are made in a moment, and yet their consequences transcend a lifetime. — MJ DeMarco

I was having a good time before, but you grow up after a couple years and realize, "I can't get drunk like this every night." Things change. — Mac DeMarco

When stress is the problem, slack is the solution. — Tom DeMarco

You can't control what you can't measure — Tom DeMarco

Just because some people see us that way doesn't mean it's what we are. We'll overcome our labels together. They don't matter; they don't make us who we are. We make us who we are. Fuck those motherfuckers."
She laughed. "When did you get so smart?"
"Baby, I've always been smart," he said playfully. "I'm just lazy as hell and rarely show. — J.M. Darhower

Part of him was missing, a gaping hole where his heart had once been. It was the part he had left behind with her, the part she carried with her wherever she went. — J.M. Darhower

you are owned by your shit, which is owned by your debt, which is either owned or profited by a corporation. So you work for a corporation, everything you buy comes from a corporation, everything you watch is produced by a corporation, and the debt you owe is held by a corporation. Ah — MJ DeMarco

I write for myself; I'm trying to keep myself interested in the music. But at the same time, I want to make the songs relatable in a way; I want to keep melodies pretty simple and the lyrics open-ended so that people could maybe relate them to their own life in different ways. Something for everybody to have a piece of. — Mac DeMarco

It's nontrivial for a company and everyone in it to know "who we are." A little bit easier, however, is to know "who we aren't." When even that knowledge is missing - when there is no basis in the company to say about a given cockamamy scheme "it just isn't us" - the company clearly lacks vision. Vision implies a visionary. There has to be one person who knows in his or her bones what's "us" and what isn't. And it can't be faked. Employees can smell an absence of vision the way a dog can smell fear. — Tom DeMarco

Thou shalt not invest in a needless business. Thou shalt not trade time for money. Thou shalt not operate on a limited scale. Thou shalt not relinquish control. Thou shalt not let a business startup be an event over process. — M.J. DeMarco

One thing I hear a lot is, 'Dude, my mom loves your record,' or 'I got it for my dad for Christmas.' I'm essentially doing dad rock. Which is great, because I love Steely Dan, you know? Nothing wrong with dad rock! — Mac DeMarco

It's possible to make an organization more efficient without making it better. That's what happens when you drive out slack. — Tom DeMarco

What chaos is left in modern society is a precious commodity. — Tom DeMarco

When you travel with your family, you may not get the volume of work done you would if you were alone, but you can still do something while recharging. If nothing else, you can gather your own thoughts, write down ideas, observe people around you, and reflect on experiences. Working doesn't always mean putting words on paper. — Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

I often hear people say that a person suffering from Alzheimer's is not the person they knew. I wonder to myself - Who are they then? — Bob DeMarco

As long as people tend to define themselves at least partially in terms of the work they do, any change to that work, its procedures and modes, is likely to have self-definitional importance to them. This can lead to surprising amounts of change resistance. — Tom DeMarco

For me, it's all about the Canadian tuxedo, and maybe a bolero. The province I grew up in in Alberta is pretty much the denim capital of Canada. The first premier of Alberta started Grand Western Garment, which Levi's bought later on. — Mac DeMarco

The fundamental response to change is not logical, but emotional. — Tom DeMarco

My grandma did opera singing for the better part of her life; she used to sing all over the place. My grandpa was a sax player, and he used to travel all over the place, too. — Mac DeMarco

People care about what your business can do for them. How will it help them? What's in it for them? Will it solve their problem? Make their life easier? Provide them with shelter? Save them money? Educate them? Make them feel something? Tell me, why on God's green Earth should I give your business money? What value are you adding to my life? — M.J. DeMarco

Although your staff may be exposed to the message "work longer and harder" while they're at the office, they're getting a very different message at home. The message at home is, "Life is passing you by. Your laundry is piling up in the closet, your babies are uncuddled, your spouse is starting to look elsewhere. There is only one time around on this merry-go-round called life, only one shot at the brass ring. And if you use your life up on C++ . . . — Tom DeMarco

If I feel like I'm going too far in one direction, I just can it. It's a weird thing. Some of my songs might be cheesy; I try and keep it light. It's hard to explain. — Mac DeMarco

Managers who inspire extraordinary loyalty from their people tend to be highly charismatic, humorous, good-looking, and tall. So, by all means, strive to be those things. If you don't feel able to improve any of those factors very much, you might consider holding on to your people by designing a little slack into their lives. — Tom DeMarco

Visual supervision is a joke for development workers. Visual supervision is for prisoners. — Tom DeMarco

wasn't as important as the act of changing. People were charmed by differentness, they liked the attention, they were intrigued by novelty. This has come to be called the Hawthorne Effect. — Tom DeMarco

Computer system analysis is like child-rearing; you can do grievous damage, but you cannot ensure success. — Tom DeMarco

A policy of "Quality - If Time Permits" will assure that no quality at all sneaks into the product. Hewlett-Packard — Tom DeMarco

Tony," DeMarco said, and Benedetto slowly opened his eyes. — Mike Lawson

I've written about the giving of trust as though it were a simple formula for building loyalty. But it isn't simple at all. The talent that is an essential ingredient of leadership tells the leader whom to trust and how much to trust and when to trust. The rule is (as with children) that trust be given slightly in advance of demonstrated trustworthiness. But not too much in advance. You have to have an unerring sense of how much the person is ready for. Setting people up for failure doesn't make them loyal to you; you have to set them up for success. Each time you give trust in advance of demonstrated performance, you flirt with danger. If you're risk-averse, you won't do it. And that's a shame, because the most effective way to gain the trust and loyalty of those beneath you is to give the same in equal measure. — Tom DeMarco

There is no such thing as "healthy" competition within a knowledge organization; all internal competition is destructive. The nature of our work is that it cannot be done by any single person in isolation. Knowledge work is by definition collaborative. — Tom DeMarco

What we are looking for is managers who are awake enough to alter the world as they find it, to make it harmonize with what they and their people are trying to accomplish. — Tom DeMarco

Internal competition has the direct effect of making coaching difficult or impossible. — Tom DeMarco

He was Carmine Marcello DeMarco ... and even broken, he was beautiful. — J.M. Darhower

I do get labeled as a guitar band, but the only reason is that's the instrument I know how to play. The guitar is serving the song I'm writing. But I'm learning how to play keyboard better now so that'll start serving the song as well; it'll be another flavor. I'm not going to switch it up with big, fat drum machine beats and real swoopy synths, but yeah ... — Mac DeMarco

I don't necessarily like wearing lipstick; I just think it's funny to do. I think the darker the better, but it's whatever my girlfriend Kiera has in her purse. — Mac DeMarco

I never liked living in Montreal. And I don't really like the music scene there. It was never my cup of tea, and I never felt like I ever fit in. — Mac DeMarco

I am saddened when I hear these words -this is not the person I knew - because those words objectify the person suffering from Alzheimer's. When you objectify a person you also dehumanize them. Once dehumanized the person becomes a villain. — Bob DeMarco

I'm a pretty easygoing person, and it bleeds into the music. Even if I'm writing the most personal song, it's not going to come out totally serious; there's always a little tongue in the cheek. — Mac DeMarco

I'd probably describe my sense of humor as 'twisted,' I guess. It's not hard to make me laugh, especially when I'm surrounded by my close friends, especially my bandmates. — Mac DeMarco