Quotes from John Knowles

Looking back, I think we were all quite mature, surprisingly responsible. In earlier wars, boys of our age had just gone off to raise hell or enlist or both, but we stayed dutifully at our desks doing tomorrow's homework.

I began to know that each morning reasserted the problems of night before, that sleep suspended all but changed nothing, that you couldn't make yourself over between dawn and dusk.

But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth.

Peace is indivisible, and the surrounding world confusion found no reflection inside me.

Stranded in this mill town railroad yard while the whole world was converging elsewhere, we seemed to be nothing but children playing among heroic men.

But I was used to finding something deadly in things that attracted me; there was always something deadly lurking in anything I wanted, anything I loved.

Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him.

I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case.

The next major advance in the health of the American people will be determined by what the individual is willing to do for himself.

Always say some prayers at night because it might turn out that there is a God.

There are simply more young people than there ever were. You get this feeling of strength. Also, large numbers can be a drawback, making it difficult to lose one's anonymity.

Exeter was, I suspect, more crucial in my life than in the lives of most members of my class, and conceivably, than in the lives of almost anyone else who ever attended the school.

The summer of 1943 at Exeter was as happy a time as I ever had in my life.

Teenagers today are more free to be themselves and to accept themselves.

There are simply more young people than there ever were. You get this feeling of strength. Also, large numbers can be a drawback, making it difficult to lose one's anonymity.

Wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart.

There was no harm in taking aim, even if the target was a dream.

I felt that I was not, never had been and never would be a living part of this overpoweringly solid and deeply meaningful world around me.

Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway over him, and afterward when you say to this person "the world today" or "life" or "reality" he will assume that you mean this moment, even if it is fifty years past. The world, through his unleashed emotions, imprinted itself upon him, and he carries the stamp of that passing moment forever.

What I mean is, I love winter, and when you really love something, then it loves you back, in whatever way it has to love.

Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.

I began to know that each morning reasserted the problems of night before, that sleep suspended all but changed nothing, that you couldn't make yourself over between dawn and dusk.

Sarcasm... the protest of those who are weak.

Everything has to evolve or else it perishes.