James Agee Quotes - Page 2

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• Seems as unfounded ... to say there isn't a God as to say there is.

  James Agee

  Atheism, Seems

  James Agee (2008). “A Death in the Family”, p.142, Penguin

  11 Copy quote

• And no matter what, there's not one thing in this world *or* the next that we can do or hope or guess at or wish or pray that can change it or help it one iota. Because whatever is, is. That's all. And all there is now is to be ready for it, strong enough for it, whatever it may be. That's all. That's all that matters. It's all that matters because it's all that's possible.

  James Agee

  Strong, Wish, Next

  James Agee (2008). “A Death in the Family”, p.99, Penguin

  11 Copy quote

• Well, now, some people learn a little quicker than others. It's nice to learn fast but it's nice to take your time too.

  James Agee

  Nice, People, Littles

  James Agee (2008). “A Death in the Family”, p.215, Penguin

  11 Copy quote

• It is probably well on the conservative side to estimate that during the past ten to fifteen years the camera has destroyed a thousand pairs of eyes, corrupted ten thousand, and seriously deceived a hundred thousand, for every one pair that it has opened, and taught.

  James Agee

  Eye, Past, Years

  Helen Levitt, James Agee (1989). “A way of seeing”

  6 Copy quote

• I suspect the fault...is in me: that I hate any job on earth, as a job and a hindrance and a semi-suicide.

  James Agee

  Suicide, Jobs, Hate

  6 Copy quote

• The camera is just a machine, which records with impressive and as a rule very cruel faithfulness.

  James Agee

  Cameras, Machines, Records

  Helen Levitt, James Agee (1989). “A way of seeing”

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  James Agee

  Summer, Children, June

  James Agee (2008). “A Death in the Family”, p.12, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

• All of consciousness is shifted from the imagined, the revisive, to the effort to perceive simply the cruel radiance of what is

  James Agee

  Effort, Radiance, Consciousness

  James Agee, Walker Evans (2001). “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families”, p.9, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• God doesn't believe in the easy way.

  James Agee

  Believe, Way, Belief

  James Agee (2008). “A Death in the Family”, p.49, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

• Of those that are drawn away, each is drawn elsewhere toward another: once more a man and a woman, in a loneliness they are not liable at that time to notice, are tightened together upon a bed: and another family has begun.

  James Agee

  Family, Loneliness, Men

  James Agee, Walker Evans (2001). “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families”, p.50, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  12 Copy quote

• It is a peculiar part of the good photographer's adventure to know where luck is most likely to lie in the stream, to hook it, and to bring it in without unfair play and without too much subduing it.

  James Agee

  Photography, Travel, Lying

  Helen Levitt, James Agee (1989). “A way of seeing”

  10 Copy quote

• It is the middle and pure height and whole of summer and a summer night, the held breath, of a planet's year; high shored sleeps the crested tide: what day of the month I do not know, which day of the week I am not sure, far less what hour of the night.

  James Agee

  Summer, Sleep, Night

  James Agee, Walker Evans (2001). “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families”, p.46, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  9 Copy quote

• 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 . . .

  James Agee

  Track, Insanity, Mind

  James Agee (1969). “Agee on film: Reviews and comments”, Putnam Publishing Group

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  James Agee

  Summer, Mother, Quilts

  James Agee (2008). “A Death in the Family”, p.15, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

• This continent, an open palm spread frank before the sky.

  James Agee

  Sky, Palms, Frank

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  James Agee

  Medicine, Race, Joy

  4 Copy quote

• I prefer a little free speech to no free speech at all; but how many have free speech or the chance or the mind for it; and is not free speech here as elsewhere clamped down on in ratio of its freedom and danger?

  James Agee

  Mind, Speech, Littles

  4 Copy quote

• Just spunk won't be enough; you've got to have gumption.

  James Agee

  Success, Gumption, Spunk

  James Agee (2008). “A Death in the Family”, p.115, Penguin

  14 Copy quote

• A girl's brain is mysterious, but only in a superficial way-a way very exasperating to me.

  James Agee

  Girl, Brain, Intelligence

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  James Agee

  Writing, Littles, Bears

  James Agee (2005). “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: A Death in the Family, & Shorter Fiction”

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  James Agee

  Fall, Writing, Vocabulary

  17 Copy quote

• 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.

  James Agee

  Dry Up, Mind, States

  4 Copy quote

• I know I am making the choice most dangerous to an artist in valuing life above art.

  James Agee

  Art, Choices, Dangerous

  "Man Without Qualities" by Geoffrey Wolff, www.nytimes.com. May 1, 1977.

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• 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.

  James Agee

  Order, Transition, Cop

  4 Copy quote

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