Tom Quinn

“Cadets at West Point did not make music. The musicians in the dance band and the marching band were Regular Army enlisted men, members of the servant class.
They were under orders to play music as written, note for note, and never mind how they felt about the music or about anything.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus

“Let me advise you to commence at once observing for yourself.
Don't trust what you are told in lectures, or read in books, but make the knowledge your own, by your own labors.
Lectures and books will serve as guides and beacons, but the goals can only be reached by travelling the road yourself.”
― Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, Dr. Mütter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine

“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

“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