James Jones Quotes

The quality which makes man want to write and be read is essentially a desire for self-exposure and masochism. Like one of those guys who has a compulsion to take his thing out and show it on the street.

I write to reach eternity

Fife... simply walked off by himself, into the jungle to look at all the things which would continue to exist after he had ceased to. There were a lot of them. Fife looked at them all. They remained singularly unchanged by his scrutiny.

If I never meet you
In this life
Let me feel the lack
A glance from your eyes
Then my life
Will be yours

You think religions are constant things? inflexible and solid and form full-grown? Religions evolve. They grow out of a need, just like any other natural phenomenon, and they follow the same natural laws. They are born, grown, have sons, and illegitimate sons, and die.

Two whores who finally found something to mother. A guy could write a book about it, he thought bitterly, call it From Hair To Maternity. It would probly be a very long book. Whores did not produce as fast as rabbits.

All Welsh knew was that he was scared shitless, and at the same time was afflicted with a choking gorge of anger that any social coercion existed in the world which could force him to be here.

All right, he thought, okay; if thats the way it is; a savagery of anger in him now at the picture. They call them "pin-up girls" and think its cute how "our boys," now that they're drafted, love to hang them in their wall lockers. And then close up all the whorehouses, every place they can, so our young men will not be contaminated.

The boy Prewitt loved the songs because they gave him something, a first hint that pain might not be pointless if you could only turn it into something.