List of James Agee Quotes

This Continent, An Open Palm Spread Frank Before The Sky.

When He Ran From A Cop, His Transitions From Accelerating Walk To Easy Jog Trot To Brisk Canter To Headlong Gallop To Flogged-piston Sprint . . . Were As Distinct And As Soberly In Order As An Automatic Gearshift.

One Thing I Feel Is This: That A Great Deal Of Poetry Is The Product Of Adolescence-or Of An Emotionally Adolescent Frame Of Mind: And That As This State Of Mind Changes, Poetry Is Likely To Dry Up.

I Know I Am Making The Choice Most Dangerous To An Artist In Valuing Life Above Art.

I'm Very Anxious Not To Fall Into Archaism Or 'literary' Diction. I Want My Vocabulary To Have A Very Large Range, But The Words Must Be Alive.

Understanding, And Action Proceeding From Understanding And Guided By It, Is One Weapon Against The World's Bombardment, The One Medicine, The One Instrument By Which Liberty, Health, And Joy May Be Shaped . . . In The Individual, And In The Race.

...but You Are Too Much For Them: The Weak In Courage Are Strong In Cunning; And One By One, You Have Absorbed And Have Captured And Dishonored, And Have Distilled Of Your Deliverers The Most Ruinous Of All Poisons; People Hear Beethoven In Concert Halls, Or Over A Bridge Game, Or To Relax; Cézannes Are Hung On Walls, Reproduced, In Natural Wood Frames; Van Gogh Is The Man Who Cut Off His Ear And Whose Yellows Became Recently Popular In Window Decoration.

I'll Do What Little I Can In Writing. Only It Will Be Very Little. I'm Not Capable Of It; And If I Were, You Would Not Go Near It At All. For If You Did, You Would Hardly Bear To Live

A Girl's Brain Is Mysterious, But Only In A Superficial Way-a Way Very Exasperating To Me.

He Used This Great, Sad, Motionless Face To Suggest Various Related Things: A One-track Mind Near The Track's End Of Pure Insanity; Mulish Imperturbability Under The Wildest Of Circumstances; How Dead A Human Being Can Get And Still Be Alive . . .

We Are Talking Now Of Summer Evenings In Knoxville, Tennessee, In The Time That I Lived There So Successfully Disguised To Myself As A Child.

By Some Chance, Here They Are, All On This Earth; And Who Shall Ever Tell The Sorrow Of Being On This Earth, Lying, On Quilts, On The Grass In A Summer Evening, Among The Sounds Of The Night. May God Bless My People, My Uncle, My Aunt, My Mother, My Good Father, Oh, Remember Them Kindly In Their Time Of Trouble; And In The Hour Of Their Taking Away.