He was nodding his head, his jaw tightening and his eyes…

“Why talk about something you can't do anything about?”

— John Knowles

There are special, strange gifted people in the world and they have to be treated with understanding

— John Knowles

It seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in…

— John Knowles

“I saw on the pad not an operator's number from my home town, but one which seemed to interrupt the beating of my heart.”

— John Knowles

“Sixteen is the key and crucial and natural age for a human being to be, and people of all other ages are ranged in…

— John Knowles

the scornful force of his tone turned the word into a curse

— John Knowles

There was no harm in taking aim, even if the target was a dream.

— John Knowles

We are all born equally far from the sun.

— 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…

— John Knowles

Sarcasm is the protest of the weak.

— John Knowles

My father was in the coal business in West Virginia. Both dad and mother were, however, originally from Massachusetts; New England, to them, meant…

— John Knowles

It was hard to remember in the heavy and sensual clarity of these mornings; I forgot whom I hated and who hated me. I…

— John Knowles

Exeter was, I suspect, more crucial in my life than in the lives of most members of my class, and conceivably, than in the…

— John Knowles

Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.

— John Knowles

“Like all old, good schools, Devon did not stand isolated behind walls and gates but emerged naturally from the town which had produced it.…

— John Knowles