A Separate Peace Phineas Quotes & Sayings

You are a known associate of the man called the Torment."
He shrugged. "News to me."
"What is?"
"That I know him."
"Know who?"
"What?"
"That you know the Torment?"
"Yeah."
"Then you do know him?"
"Yeah." Then quickly, "No."
"You don't know him?"
"I, no, I, no. Never heard of him."
"I hate to say this, Vaurien, but that's astoundingly unconvincing. — Derek Landy

Flair-a primitive kind of style-may be innate, but I think knowledgeable taste is learned, the result of travel, experience, living, education. — Albert Hadley

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. — John Knowles

If somebody wants to be your enemy, there's only one thing you can do. You give them exactly what they want. It confuses them and makes them wonder what you're up to. — David Wellington

What I want to give in the theatre is beauty, that's what I want to give. — Edith Evans

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs. — Charlotte Bronte

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

I felt that I was not, never had been and never would be a living part of this overpoweringly solid and deeply meaningful world around me. — John Knowles

Must like the rest of us on the surface, he had an underlying obliging and considerate strain which barred him from being a really important member of the class. You had to be rude at least sometimes and edgy often to be credited with "personality," and without that accolade no one at Devon could be anyone. No one, with the exception of course of Phineas. — John Knowles

As I walked briskly out the road the wind knifed at my face, but this sun caressed the back of my neck. — John Knowles

I get into lab early and leave a bit early, too. So I like to have an hour or two before everybody comes in. — John Gurdon

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. — John Knowles

I had to be right in never talking about what you could not change, and I had to make many people agree that I was right. None of them ever accused me of being responsible for what had happened to Phineas, either because they could not believe it or because they could not understand it. I would have talked about that, but they would not, and I would not talk about Phineas in any other way. — John Knowles

The scornful force of his tone turned the word into a curse — John Knowles

I'm just trying to change my life because I'm not above killing any drug dealer for money — Mike Tyson

I think we reminded them of what peace was like, we boys of sixteen. We were registered with no draft board, we had taken no physical examinations. No one had ever tested us for hernia or color blindness. Trick knees and punctured eardrums were minor complaints and not yet disabilities which would separate a few from the fate of the rest. We were careless and wild, and I suppose we could be thought of as a sign of the life the war was being fought to preserve. Anyway, they were more indulgent toward us than at any other time; they snapped at the heels of seniors, driving and molding and arming them for the war. They noticed our games tolerantly. We reminded them of what peace was like, of lives which were not bound up with destruction. — John Knowles

As I had to do whenever I glimpsed this river, I thought of Phineas. Not of the tree and pain, but of one of his favorite tricks, Phineas in exaltation, balancing on one foot on the prow of a canoe like a river god, his raised arms invoking the air to support him, face transfigured, body a complex set of balances and compensations, each muscle aligned in perfection with all the others to maintain this supreme fantasy of achievement, his skin glowing from immersions, his whole body hanging between river and sky as though he had transcended gravity and might by gently pushing upward with his foot glide a little way higher and remain suspended in space, encompassing all the glory of the summer and offering it to the sky. — John Knowles

I'm sure the England selectors thought if they took me on and gave me the job, I'd want to run the show. They were shrewd, because that's exactly what I would have done. — Brian Clough

I started doing cocaine to get through interviews, 'cause people wanted to know a lot about my personal life and I wasn't prepared for a 60 Minutes interview every time. Doing bumps I was able to get through the day, but then I would smoke weed to calm me down - it was the only way I could get through the day without people noticing I was doing it. — Kid Cudi

Ulrik's smile grew, while his gold eyes glittered with humor. There are those who think me inconsequential. Others don't know what threat I am. Still others would disregard me. They'll all learn soon enough. — Donna Grant

The laws that Charondas gave to Catana, ... A man might divorce his wife, or a wife her husband, said Charondas, but then he or she must not marry anyone younger than the divorced mate. — Will Durant