John Knowles

“The summer of 1943 at Exeter was as happy a time as I ever had in my life.”

“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.”

“Young people in my generation were sort of in lockstep, and it wasn't just the '40s, either. In the '30s and in the '50s it was the same. No one ever dropped out unless he got sick or got kicked out.”

“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.”

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

“Never say you are five feet nine whenyou are five feet eight and a half" was the first one I encountered.Another was, "Always say some prayers at night because it might turnout that there is a God.”

“Looking back, I think we were all quite mature, surprisingly responsible. In earlier wars, boys of our age had just gone off to raise hell or enlist or both, but we stayed dutifully at our desks doing tomorrow's homework.”

“...his jaw tightening and his eyes closed on the tears. “I believe you. It’s okay because I understand and I believe you.”

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

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

“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.”

“Phineas created an atmosphere in which I continued now to live, a way of sizing up the world with erratic and entirely personal reservations, letting its rocklike facts sift through and be accepted only a little at a time, only as much as he could assimilate without a sense of chaos and loss.”

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

“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.”

“I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case.”