asp quotes

Quotes from A Separate Peace by John Knowles. Ran via queue. Posts once day. Quotes will most likely repeat.

[asp-quotes]

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He began to laugh again. “You always were a lord of the manor, weren’t you? A swell guy, except when the chips were down. You always were a savage underneath. I always knew that only I never admitted it. But in the last few weeks,” despair broke into his face again. “I admitted a hell of a lot to myself. Not about you. Don’t flatter yourself. Why the hell should I think about you? Did you ever think about me? I thought about myself, and Ma, and the old man, and pleasing them all the time. Well, never mind about that now. It’s you we happen to be talking about now. Like a savage underneath. Like,” now there was the blind confusion in his eyes again, a wild slyness around his mouth, “like that time you knocked Finny out of the tree.”

I sprang out of the chair. “You crazy stupid bastard—“

Still laughing, “Like that time you crippled him for life.”

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“You know what I’m talking about well enough.”

“No I don’t.”

“Oh yes you do.”

“Are you telling me what I know?”

“Damn right I am.”

“What’s he talking about,” said Finny.

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The air was laden with hospital smells, not unlike those of the gym except that the Infirmary lacked that sense of spent human vitality. This was becoming the new background of Finny’s life, this purely medical element from which bodily health was absent

— Ch. 12

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“Completely over the falls. I wanted to be sure you’d recovered. That’s why I called up. I knew that if you’d let them put anybody else in the room in my place then you really were crazy. But you didn’t, I knew you wouldn’t. Well, I did have just a trace of doubt that was because you talked so crazy here. I have to admit I had just a second when I wondered. I’m sorry about that, Gene. Naturally I was completely wrong. You didn’t let them put anyone else in my spot.”

“No, I didn’t let them.”

“I could shoot myself for thinking you might. I really knew you wouldn’t.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

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"But it wasn't like him to check with such care, not like him at all. He was taking a long time at it, and then I noticed that as he tried to slide a hairbrush out from under a flap holding it in the case his hands were shaking so badly that he couldn't get it out. Seeing that released me on the spot."

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"What was I doing up here anyway? Why did I let Finny talk me into stupid things like this? Was he getting some kind of hold over me?"

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"I HAVE ESCAPED AND NEED HELP. I AM AT CHRISTMAS LOCATION. YOU UNDERSTAND. NO NEED TO RISK ADDRESS HERE. MY SAFETY DEPENDS ON YOU COMING AT ONCE.

(signed) YOUR BEST FRIEND,

ELWIN LEPER LEPELLIER."

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"I've been violated."

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"The effect of his injury on the masters seemed deeper than after other disasters i remembered there. It was as though they felt it was especially unfair that it should strike one of the sixteen-year-olds, one of the few young men who could be free and happy in the summer of 1942."

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"Phineas was the essence of this careless peace."

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"Finny got up from the cot, picking up his cane as an afterthought. He looked oddly at me, his face set to burst out laughing I thought. “Naturally I don’t believe books and I don’t believe teachers,” he came across a few paces, “but I do believe—it’s important after all for me to believe you. Christ, I’ve got to believe you, at least. I know you better than anybody.” I waited without saying anything."

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"I like the winter," Finny assured me for the fourth time, as we came back from chapel that morning.

"Well, it doesn't like you."

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"So, you killed him, did you?" A boy uncoiled tensely from the couch.”

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"Finny, his balance gone, swung his head around to look at me for an instant with extreme interest, and then he tumbled sideways, broke through the little branches below and hit the bank with a sickening, unnatural thud. It was the first clumsy physical action I had ever seen him make. With unthinking sureness I moved out on the limb and jumped into the river, every trace of my fear of this forgotten"

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"I escaped!" the words surging out in a voice and intensity that was not Leper's. His face was furious, but his eyes denied the fury; instead they saw it before them. They were filled with terror.

"What do you mean, you escaped?" I said sharply. "You don't escape from the army."

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“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. And if it wasn’t there, as for example with Phineas, then I put it there myself.”

- Ch. 7 Pg 101