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.
Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.
What I mean is, I love winter, and when you really love something, then it loves you back, in whatever way it has to love.
Gene, on the desire to be Finny: “I lost part of myself to him then, and a soaring sense of freedom revealed that this must have been my purpose from the first: to become a part of Phineas.
I jounced the limb.
Because, unfamiliar with the absence of fear and what that was like, I have not been able to identify its presence.
Phineas just walked serenely on, or rather flowed on, rolling forward in his white sneakers with such unthinking unity of movement that “walk” didn’t describe it.
Never say you are five feet nine when you are five feet eight and a half.
There was no harm in taking aim, even if the target was a dream.
As I said, this was my sarcastic summer. It was only long after that I recognized sarcasm as the protest of people who are weak.
It seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart.
But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth.
So the more things stay the same, the more they change after all.
You have to do what you think is the right thing, but just make sure it’s the right thing in the long run, and not just for the moment.