Quotes by James Agee

About James Agee:

James Rufus Agee was an American author, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, he was one of the most influential film critics in the U.S. His autobiographical novel, A Death in the Family (1957), won the author a posthumous 1958 Pulitzer Prize.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

And a human being whose life is nurtured in an advantage which has accrued from the disadvantage of other human beings, and who prefers that this should remain as it is, is a human being by definition only, having much more in common with the bedbug,...

James Agee

God doesn't believe in the easy way.

James Agee

And somewhat as in blind night, on a mild sea, a sailor may be made aware of an iceberg, fanged and mortal, bearing invisibly near, by the unwarned charm of its breath, nothingness now revealed itself: that permanent night upon which the stars in the...

James Agee

How far we all come. How far we all come away from ourselves. So far, so much between, you can never go home again. You can go home, it's good to go home, but you never really get all the way home again in your life. And what's it all for? All I trie...

James Agee

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

... Play the age as comedy if you want to get away with murder.

James Agee

... understanding, and action proceeding from understanding and guided by it, is the one weapon against the world's bombardment, the one medicine, the one instrument by which liberty, health, and joy may be shaped or shaped towards, in the individual...

James Agee

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

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

James Agee

The mere attempt to examine my own confusion would consume volumes.

James Agee

You must be in tune with the times and prepared to break with tradition.

James Agee

Several tons of dynamite are set off in this picture - none of it under the right people.

James Agee

...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 h...

James Agee

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

Author Bio

  • NameJames Agee
  • DescriptionAmerican author, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic
  • AliasesJames Rufus Agee
  • BornNovember 27, 1909
  • DiedMay 16, 1955
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionScreenwriter; Poet; Author; Novelist; Journalist; Autobiographer
  • WorksA Death In The Family