Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions.

It's better to live with a sad truth than with all the happy progress talk you get up here in the North.

The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

Schools teach you to imitate. If you don't imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A's. Originality on the other hand could get you anything -- from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it.

A person filled with gumption doesn’t sit about stewing about things. He’s at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what’s up the track and meeting it when it comes. That’s gumption. If you’re going to repair a motorcycle, an adequate supply of gumption is the first and most important tool. If you haven’t got that you might as well gather up all the other tools and put them away, because they won’t do you any good.

Quality isn't a thing. It is an event.

The bones and flesh and legal statistics are the garments worn by the personality, not the other way around.