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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.

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
Things
Findings
Finding
Loved
Used
Anything
Wanted
Lurking
Something
Deadly
Always
Attracted

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My father was in the coal business in West Virginia. Both dad and mother were, however, originally from Massachusetts New England, to them, meant the place to go if you really wanted an education.
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So the more things remain the same, the more they change after all.
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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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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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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.
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Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.
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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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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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It was demeaning to scrape affection from virtually everyone you encountered. That was immature.
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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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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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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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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.
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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.
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The best teaching I ever experienced was at Exeter. Yale was a distinct letdown afterward.
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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.
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Sarcasm... the protest of those who are weak.
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I did no know everything there was to know about myself, and knew that I did not know it.
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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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Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him.
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