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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.

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
Living
Felt
Around
Part
Never
Would
Solid
World
Meaningful
Deeply

More quotes by John Knowles

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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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Everything has to evolve or else it perishes.
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Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.
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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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It was demeaning to scrape affection from virtually everyone you encountered. That was immature.
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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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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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Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him.
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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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But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth.
John Knowles
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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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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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Your war memories will be with you forever, you'll be asked about them thousands of times after the war is over. People will get their respect for you from that-partly from that, don't get me wrong-but if you can say that you were up front where there was some real shooting going on, then that will mean a whole lot to you in years to come.
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Sarcasm... the protest of those who are weak.
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the scornful force of his tone turned the word into a curse
John Knowles
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As I walked briskly out the road the wind knifed at my face, but this sun caressed the back of my neck.
John Knowles
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I did no know everything there was to know about myself, and knew that I did not know it.
John Knowles
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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.
John Knowles
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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.
John Knowles
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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.
John Knowles