A Separate Peace

by John Knowles

Summer lazed on.

we seemed to be nothing but children playing among heroic men.

I owed it to myself to meet this crisis in my life when I chose, and I chose now.

“In a way,” deep in argument, his eyes never wavered from mine, “the whole world is on a Funny Farm now. But it’s only the fat old men who get the joke.”

I found that only through a continuous use of the imagination could I hold out against Finny’s driving offensive in favor of peace.

“I always thought the war would come for me when it wanted me,” he said when he came to say goodbye the last day. “I never thought I’d be going to it.

And I did stay. Sometimes you are too ashamed to leave.

silences there had a heavy hum of their own.