Quote

All of consciousness is shifted from the imagined, the revisive, to the effort to perceive simply the cruel radiance of what is

James Agee

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James Agee
Age: 45 †
Born: 1909
Born: November 27
Died: 1955
Died: May 16
Author
Autobiographer
Critic
Film Critic
Film Director
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Knoxville
Tennessee
James Rufus Agee
Rufus Agee
Perceive
Consciousness
Simply
Effort
Shifted
Radiance
Imagined
Cruel

More quotes by James Agee

Image
One thing I feel is this: that a great deal of poetry is the product of adolescence-or of an emotionally adolescent frame of mind: and that as this state of mind changes, poetry is likely to dry up.
James Agee
Image
It is clear enough by now to most people that the camera never lies is a foolish saying. Yet it is doubtful whether most people realize how extraordinarily slippery a liar the camera is.
James Agee
Image
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
Image
Truth lies within a little and certain compass, but error is immense.
James Agee
Image
I'll do what little I can in writing. Only it will be very little. I'm not capable of it and if I were, you would not go near it at all. For if you did, you would hardly bear to live
James Agee
Image
Seems as unfounded ... to say there isn't a God as to say there is.
James Agee
Image
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
Image
The camera is just a machine, which records with impressive and as a rule very cruel faithfulness.
James Agee
Image
The mere attempt to examine my own confusion would consume volumes.
James Agee
Image
Just spunk won't be enough you've got to have gumption.
James Agee
Image
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
Image
Some people get where they hope to in this world. Most of us don't.
James Agee
Image
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
Image
I know I am making the choice most dangerous to an artist in valuing life above art.
James Agee
Image
I know the most important faculty to develop is one for hard, continuous and varied work and living but the difference between knowing this and doing anything consistent about it is often abysmal.
James Agee
Image
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
Image
I suspect the fault...is in me: that I hate any job on earth, as a job and a hindrance and a semi-suicide.
James Agee
Image
The goal is the same: life itself and the price is the same life itself.
James Agee
Image
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, the tapeworm, the cancer, and the scavengers of the deep sea.
James Agee
Image
This continent, an open palm spread frank before the sky.
James Agee