“For one who sets himself to look at all earnestly, at all in purpose toward truth, into the living eyes of a human life: what is it he there beholds that so freezes and abashes his ambitious heart? What is… — james agee Copy Share Image
“A house of simple people which stands empty and silent in the vast Southern country morning sunlight, and everything which on this morning in eternal space it by chance contains, all thus left open and defenseless to a reverent and… — James Agee Copy Share Image
By some chance, here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on… — James Agee Copy Share
The camera seems to me, next to unassisted and weaponless consciousness, the central instrument of our time. — James Agee Copy Share
“Yes, for every child, rich or poor, there's a time of running through a dark place; and there's no word for a child's fear,… — James Agee Copy Share
“Kate, the mother of thirteen, is forty-nine; delicately made; her skin creamlike where the weather has not got at it. She is smaller than… — James Agee Copy Share
“The passion for vengeance is a terrifyingly strong one, very easily and probably inevitably wrought up by such evidence [of atrocities], even at our… — James Agee Copy Share
It's kind of a test, Mary, and it's the only kind that amounts to anything. When something rotten like this happens, then you have… — James Agee Copy Share
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… — James Agee Copy Share
“God is not here, Hannah said to herself; and made a small cross upon her breastbone, against her blasphemy.” — James Agee Copy Share
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 Copy Share
The artist's task is not to alter the world as the eye sees it into a world of aesthetic reality, but to perceive the… — James Agee Copy Share
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… — James Agee Copy Share
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… — James Agee Copy Share
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… — James Agee Copy Share
