John Knowles
John Knowles
John Knowles was an American novelist best known for A Separate Peace. He died in 2001 at the age of 75...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 September 1926
CountryUnited States of America
peace children men
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.
tone separate-peace force
the scornful force of his tone turned the word into a curse
tree violence separate-peace
Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.
moments separate-peace
Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him.
peace men years
This was the tree, and it seemed to me standing there to resemble those men, the giants of your childhood, whom you encounter years later and find that they are not merely smaller in relation to your growth, but they are absolutely smaller, shrunken by age. In this double demotion the old giants have become pygmies while you were looking the other way.
peace separate-peace
So the more things stay the same, the more they change after all.
separate-peace used wanted
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.
feelings levels separate-peace
But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth.
burden ease grant taxpayers
If we could get some grant money, it would ease the burden on the taxpayers of Philipsburg,
branch club high members river tree whose
We really did have a club whose members jumped from the branch of a very high tree into the river as initiation.
attacks depraved experience masters novel sadistic school
The novel has one peculiarity for a school novel: It never attacks the place; it isn't an expose; it doesn't show sadistic masters or depraved students, or use any of the other school-novel sensationalistic cliches. That's because I didn't experience things like that there.
against anchor athletic bore damn decisive far finished gives good healthy man relay swimming thrilling
Swimming isn't the most thrilling sport in the world, far from it; it's a damn bore most of the time, but it does make you healthy and gives you a good body. I finished first as the anchor man in the final, decisive relay against Andover, to become an athletic mini-hero for about 15 minutes.
dry high leaving people short
There's been a lot of misinformation out there. I think they're leaving a lot of people high and dry at very short notice.
border breathe cold found hampshire kid return session summer survived winter
As a kid from a border state, I found the New Hampshire winter breathtakingly cold - for a while I didn't think I could breathe there at all - but I survived to return for the summer session of 1943.