A Separate Peace

by John Knowles

I recognized sarcasm as the protest of people who are weak.

I began to know that each morning reasserted the problems of the night before, that sleep suspended all but changed nothing, that you couldn’t make yourself over between dawn and dusk.

I did not stop to think that one wave is inevitably followed by another even larger and more powerful, when the tide is coming in.

Sometimes you are too ashamed to leave.

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.