James Agee quotes

James Agee was an American novelist, journalist, poet, and screenwriter, best known for his work "A Death in the Family." His deeply personal writing explored themes of family, loss, and society. He remains a significant figure in American literature and film criticism. Here are 12 of his quotes:

God doesn't believe in the easy way.

James Agee

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

James Agee

Isn't every human being both a scientist and an artist; and in writing of human experience, isn't there a good deal to be said for recognizing that fact and for using both methods?

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

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

James Agee

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

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

Some people get where they hope to in this world. Most of us don't.

James Agee

You've got to bear it in mind that nobody that ever lived is specially privileged; the axe can fall at any moment, on any neck, without any warning or any regard for justice.

James Agee

In every child who is born under no matter what circumstances and of no matter what parents, the potentiality of the human race is born again, and in him, too, once more, and each of us, our terrific responsibility toward human life: toward the utmost idea of goodness, of the horror of terrorism, and of God.

James Agee