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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.

John Knowles

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John Knowles
Age: 75 †
Born: 1926
Born: September 16
Died: 2001
Died: November 29
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Fairmont
West Virginia
Must
Fifteen
Mean
Clarity
Important
Escape
Great
Across
Interval
Made
Lived
Undertaking
Years
Looking
Undertakings
Fear
Intervals
Back
Succeeded

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The next major advance in the health of the American people will be determined by what the individual is willing to do for himself.
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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.
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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.
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Everything has to evolve or else it perishes.
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Sarcasm... the protest of those who are weak.
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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.
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Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him.
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But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth.
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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.
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Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.
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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.
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It was demeaning to scrape affection from virtually everyone you encountered. That was immature.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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