John Knowles

“I jounced the limb.”

— John Knowles

We are all born equally far from the sun.

— John Knowles

“...moved by his own sermon.”

— John Knowles

Sarcasm is the protest of the weak.

— John Knowles

“You never waste your time. That's why I have to do it for you.”

— John Knowles

“Never say you are five feet nine when you are five feet eight and a half.”

— John Knowles

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

— John Knowles

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

— John Knowles

Teenagers today are more free to be themselves and to accept themselves.

— John Knowles

“When you love something it loves you back in whatever way it has to love.”

— John Knowles

“The first person who says anything unpleasant will get a swift kick in the ass. ”

— John Knowles

Sarcasm... the protest of those who are weak.

— John Knowles

It was demeaning to scrape affection from virtually everyone you encountered. That was immature.

— John Knowles

It is a sad day when one looks back and sees that his largest regrets have become some of the most integral…

— John Knowles

The best teaching I ever experienced was at Exeter. Yale was a distinct letdown afterward.

— John Knowles

“Je ne give a damn pas about le français, Les filles en France ne wear pas les pantelons”

— John Knowles

“Phineas just walked serenely on, or rather flowed on, rolling forward in his white sneakers with such unthinking unity of movement that…

— 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…

— John Knowles

“Because, unfamiliar with the absence of fear and what that was like, I have not been able to identify its presence.”

— John Knowles

“He had never been jealous of me for a second. Now I knew that there never was and never could have been…

— John Knowles

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

— John Knowles

Looking back now across fifteen years I could see with great clarity the fear I had lived in, which must mean that…

— John Knowles

“Phineas created an atmosphere in which I continued now to live, a way of sizing up the world with erratic and entirely…

— John Knowles

Life is fighting. In life, it's the look ahead that counts. We are all born equally far from the sun. There is…

— John Knowles

Never say you are five feet nine when you are five feet eight and a half" was the first one I encountered.…

— John Knowles

“He was nodding his head, his jaw tightening and his eyes closed on the tears. “I believe you. It’s okay because I…

— John Knowles

“...it also meant mornings of glory such as this one, in which the snow, white almost to blueness, lay like a soft…

— John Knowles

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

— John Knowles

“Someone knocked me down; I pushed Brinker over a small slope; someone was trying to tackle me from behind. Everywhere there was…

— john knowles

“Now, in this winter of snow and crutches with Phineas, I begin to know that each morning reasserted the problems of the…

— John Knowles

“I didn't know why he had chosen me, why it was only to me that he could show the most humbling sides…

— John Knowles

“I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because my war ended before I…

— 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…

— John Knowles

“Now here it was after all, preserved by some considerate hand with varnisch and wax. Preserved along with it, like stale air…

— John Knowles

“We were careless and wild, and I suppose we could be thought of as a sign of the life the war was…

— John Knowles

“The tree was not only stripped by the cold season, it seemed weary with age, enfeebled, dry. So more the things remain…

— John Knowles

Everything has to evolve or else it perishes.

— John Knowles

Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him.

— John Knowles

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

— John Knowles

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

— John Knowles