A Separate Peace Events Quotes

Chapter 1

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? (1.32).

Chapter 2

He pressed his advantage because he saw that Mr. Prud'homme was pleased, won over in spite of himself. […] There might be a flow of simple, unregulated friendliness between them, and such flo...

Chapter 3

Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway over him, and afterward when you say to this person "the worl...

Chapter 4

But examinations were at hand. I wasn't as ready for them as I wanted to be. The Suicide Society continued to meet every evening, and I continued to attend, because I didn't want Finny to understan...

Chapter 5

It struck me then that I was injuring him again. It occurred to me that this could be an even deeper injury than what I had done before. I would have to back out of it, I would have to disown it (5...

Chapter 6

The point was, the grace of it was, that it had nothing to do with sports. For I wanted no more of sports. They were barred from me, as though when Dr. Stanpole said, "Sports are finished" he had b...

Chapter 7

We seemed to be nothing but children playing against heroic men (7.79).

Chapter 8

"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." I didn't think that this was true, […] but it was like every other...

Chapter 9

Phineas recaptured that magic gift for existing primarily in space, one foot conceding briefly to gravity its rights before spinning him off again into the air. It was his wildest demonstration of...

Chapter 10

That night I made for the first time the kind of journey which later became the monotonous routine of my life; traveling through unknown countryside from one unknown settlement to another. The next...

Chapter 11

"Naturally I don't believe books and I don't believe teachers. […] 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...

Chapter 12

None of them ever accused me of being responsible for what had happened to Phineas, either because they could not believe it or else because they could not understand it. I would have talked about...

Chapter 13

I finally identified this as the source of his disillusionment during the winter, this generalized, faintly self-pitying resentment against millions of people he did not know (13.35).