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
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
You must be in tune with the times and prepared to break with tradition. – 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
We are all hostages, and we are all terrorists. This circuit has replaced that other one of masters and slaves, the dominating and the dominated, the exploiters and the exploited. It is worse than the one it replaces, but at least it liberates us from liberal nostalgia and the ruses of history. – Jean Baudrillard