John Knowles Peace Quotations

But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth.

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.

So the more things stay the same, the more they change after all.

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.

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

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

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

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.