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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.
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
School
Suspects
Ever
Crucial
Life
Members
Almost
Class
Exeter
Anyone
Conceivably
Lives
Attended
Else
Suspect
More quotes by John Knowles
The best teaching I ever experienced was at Exeter. Yale was a distinct letdown afterward.
John Knowles
the scornful force of his tone turned the word into a curse
John Knowles
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.
John Knowles
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
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.
John Knowles
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
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.
John Knowles
Everything has to evolve or else it perishes.
John Knowles
As I walked briskly out the road the wind knifed at my face, but this sun caressed the back of my neck.
John Knowles
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.
John Knowles
I did no know everything there was to know about myself, and knew that I did not know it.
John Knowles
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.
John Knowles
Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him.
John Knowles
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
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.
John Knowles
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.
John Knowles
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.
John Knowles
But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth.
John Knowles
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
So the more things remain the same, the more they change after all.
John Knowles
