Children, taught either years beneath their intelligence or miles wide of relevance to it, or both: their intelligence becomes hopelessly bewildered, drawn off its centers, bored, or atrophied. – James Agee
He used this great, sad, motionless face to suggest various related things: a one-track mind near the tracks end of pure insanity; mulish imperturbability under the wildest of circumstances; how dead a human being can get and still be alive… – James Agee
As a whole part of psychological education it needs to be remembered that a neurosis can be valuable; also that adjustment to a sick and insane environment is of itself not health but sickness and insanity. – James Agee
I believe that every human being is potentially capable within his limits of fully realizing his potentialities; that this, his being cheated and choked of it, is infinitely the ghastliest, commonest, and most inclusive of all the crimes of which the human world can assure itself. – James Agee