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James Jones Quotes
1921–1977 United States
James Ramon Jones (6 November 1921 – 9 May 1977) was an American author, who became famous after the publication of his first novel, From Here to Eternity.
Also known as: James Jones (author)
Random James Jones quote
30 quotes
If I hadn't been lying in a hole I'd dug with my hands and helmet, that shell would probably have finished me off. The hole was only six or eight inches deep, but that makes an awful lot of difference, and it looked like a canyon.
To Reach Eternity (1989)
Why was it everything was always so goddam complicated? Even the simplest things was so goddam complicated when you come to doing them.
When he finished packing, he walked out on to the third-floor porch of the barracks brushing the dust from his hands, a very neat and deceptively slim young man in the summer khakis that were still early morning fresh.
I don't think that combat has ever been written about truthfully; it has always been described in terms of bravery and cowardice ... hell, they don't even apply to what, in actual fact, modern warfare has become.
You have to really work at it to write. I guess there has to be talent first; but even with talent you still have to work at it, to write.
The Paris Review interview (1958)
But the thing is that Fatso doesn't even know why he is being killed; and when Prewitt sees that, he realizes what a fruitless thing he has done.
The Paris Review interview (1958)
I've made some strides in trying to understand myself, I think. And I think that in my life I'm less afraid of being thought a coward than I used to be.
The Paris Review interview (1958)
Especially in the beginning of the war, the guys who became good soldiers, and good infantry men sort of had to accept that they were dead — that they weren't going to get out of it.
Don Swaim interview (1975)
The two transports had sneaked up from the south in the first graying flush of dawn, their cumbersome mass cutting smoothly through the water whose still greater mass bore them silently, themselves s gray as the dawn which camouflaged them.
The Thin Red Line (1962)
Humor itself is a kind strange thing in the first place, it's kind of a short-circuit in the brain around horror that saves us from having to face it totally.
Don Swaim interview (1975)
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