“As I walked briskly out the road the wind knifed at my face, but this sun caressed the back of my neck.”

“Looking back now across fifteen years I could see with great clarity the fear I had lived in, which must mean that in the interval I had succeeded in a very important undertaking: I must have made my escape from it.”

“I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because my war ended before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there.”

“Then for no reason at all, I felt magnificent. It was as though my body until that instant had simply been lazy as though the aches and exhaustion were all imagined, created from nothing in order to keep me from truly exerting myself. Now my body seemed at last to say, "Well, if you must have it, here!" and an accession of strength came flooding through me. Buoyed up, I forgot my usual feeling of routine self-pity when working out, I lost myself, oppressed mind along with aching body; all entanglements were shed, I broke into the clear.”

“I saw on the pad not an operator's number from my home town, but one which seemed to interrupt the beating of my heart.”

“From my locker I collected my sneakers, jock strap, and gym pants and then turned away, leaving the door ajar for the first time, forlornly open and abandoned, the locker unlocked. This was more final than the moment when the Headmaster handed me my diploma. My schooling was over now.”

“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.”