How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
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 been speaking of me. I didn't trust myself in them, and I didn't trust anyone else. It was as though football players were really bent on crushing the life out of each other, as though boxers were in combat to the death, as though even a tennis ball might turn into a bullet (6.93).
What Gene has done by (allegedly) causing Finny's accident is to break the barrier between the war and the innocence of youth. That's why sports are over – there's no such thing anymore, in Gene's mind, as harmless play. Compare this passage to Finny's conception of sports (in which they are purely good and no one ever loses).
Quote #5
We seemed to be nothing but children playing against heroic men (7.79).
…Yet the battles Gene fights, against his own fear and resentment, are far from child's play.
Quote #6
The war would be deadly all right. But I was used to finding something deadly in things that attracted me; there was always something deadly lurking in anything I wanted, anything I loved. And if it wasn't there, as for example with Phineas, then I put it there myself (7.115).
This hits an odd note for Gene. Either he's genuinely masochistic (unlikely), or he's desperately trying to justify his earlier actions.