Tom Quinn

“(and your grandfather said, 'Suffer little children to come unto Me': and what did He mean by that? how, if He meant that little children should need to be suffered to approach Him, what sort of earth had He created; that if they had to suffer in order to approach Him, what sort of Heaven did He have?)”
― William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!

“Place no dependence on your own genius, even if you possess it. If you have great talents, industry will improve them; if you have but moderate talents, industry will supply their deficiency--nothing is denied to well directed labor; nothing is obtained without it.”
― Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, Dr. Mütter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine

“The approach of a man's life out of the past is history, and the approach of time out of the future is mystery. Their meeting is the present, and it is consciousness, the only time life is alive.”
― Wendell Berry, Recollected Essays, 1965-1980

“You come in all clammed up, defences in depth, alibi-systems long established, delusions full-blown. In order to have a chance of staying sober, or rather of staying dry and becoming sober, you've got to change. Nobody likes to change. What you really want, when you come into hospital, even for the second or third or ninth time, is to stay just who you are and not drink. That's not possible, of course. Jack-Who-Drinks has got to alter into Jack-Who-Does-Not-Drink-And-Likes-It.”
― John Berryman, Recovery