Exeter was, I suspect, more crucial in my life than in the lives of most members of my class, and conceivably, than in the lives of almost anyone else who ever attended the school.

Sarcasm... the protest of those who are weak.

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.

It was demeaning to scrape affection from virtually everyone you encountered. That was immature.

The summer of 1943 at Exeter was as happy a time as I ever had in my life.

It was hard to remember in the heavy and sensual clarity of these mornings; I forgot whom I hated and who hated me. I wanted to break out crying from stabs of hopeless joy, or intolerable promise, or because these mornings were too full of beauty for me, because I knew of too much hate to be contained in a world like this.

I did no know everything there was to know about myself, and knew that I did not know it.