Quotes from John Knowles

All of them, all except Phineas, constructed at infinite cost to themselves these Maginot Lines against this enemy they thought they saw across the frontier, this enemy who never attacked that way—if he ever attacked at all; if he was indeed the enemy.

So the more things remained the same, the more they changed after all. Nothing endures. Not love, not a tree, not even a death by violence.

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.

This was the tree, and it seemed to me standing there to resemble those men, the giants of your childhood, whom you encounter years later and find that they are not merely smaller in relation to your growth, but they are absolutely smaller, shrunken by age. In this double demotion the old giants have become pygmies while you were looking the other way.

When you love something it loves you back in whatever way it has to love.

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

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

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

You have to do what you think is the right thing, but just make sure it's the right thing in the long run, and not just for the moment.

It is a sad day when one looks back and sees that his largest regrets have become some of the most integral elements of his dreams.

Looking back now across fifteen years I could see with great clarity the fear I had lived in, which must mean that in the interval I had succeeded in a very important undertaking: I must have made my escape from it.

I did not know everything there was to know about myself, and knew that I did not know it.

It was hard to remember in the heavy and sensual clarity of these mornings; I forgot whom I hated and who hated me. I wanted to break out crying from stabs of hopeless joy, or intolerable promise, or because these mornings were too full of beauty for me, because I knew of too much hate to be contained in a world like this.

Je ne give a damn pas about le français, Les filles en France ne wear pas les pantelons

As I said, this was my sarcastic summer. It was only long after that I recognized sarcasm as the protest of people who are weak.

I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because my war ended before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there.

Gene, on the desire to be Finny: "I lost part of myself to him then, and a soaring sense of freedom revealed that this must have been my purpose from the first: to become a part of Phineas.

So the more things remain the same, the more they change after all—plus c'est la même chose, plus ça change. Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even a death by violence.

Never say you are five feet nine when you are five feet eight and a half" was the first one I encountered. Another was, "Always say some prayers at night because it might turn out that there is a God.

I knew that part of friendship consisted in accepting a friend's shortcomings, which sometimes included his parents.

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

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.

Life is fighting. In life, it's the look ahead that counts. We are all born equally far from the sun. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love.