Quotes from James Jones

Of all the things I dislike, I hate women worst.

Did you ever hear the one about how every living woman dies three times? Once when she is seduced of her virginity, once when she is seduced of her freedom (I believe they call it marriage), and once when she is seduced of her husband.

Being in love made you especially vulnerable.

Maybe he was a good man once, this old one, my predecessor, but they had worn him down, in thirty years, like a big knife made thin and fragile, needlelike, from constant honings. All that good steel just rubbed away no one knew where.

How about when I get to work, there was a note attached to a new chair at my desk saying If you break it , you buy the next one. I sent an email out saying if I break it replace it with the old one, there was nothing wrong with it.

So in The Thin Red Line 1st/Sgt Warden became 1st/Sgt Welsh, Pvt Prewitt became Pvt Witt, Mess/Sgt Stark became Mess/Sgt Storm. While remaining the same people as before. In Whistle Welsh becomes Mart Winch, Witt becomes Bobby Prell, Storm becomes John Strange.

Shame ain't a spontaneous emotion; shame is an induced emotion.

It was not true that all men killed the things they loved. What was true was that all things killed the men who loved them. Which, after all, was as it should be.

Maybe you'll remember me then." "I'll remember you." "Will you? Will you remember me tomorrow?" "Yes. Next week, too." "Will you remember me a month from now?" "Yes." "I dont believe it." "But I will though. Truly I will." "All right. I believe you. I know I'll remember you.

If a man could just hang onto one illusion he could still love. The main trouble with being an honest man was that it lost you all your illusions.

There are some people," she said, smiling at him, "whose weaknesses seem to be strength, instead of weakness.

We've built a million kitchens, For the cooks to burn our beans; We've walked a hundred million miles, We've cleaned out camp latrines. If we ever get to heaven, the angels all will yell: Take a front seat, Men of Schofield, You've done your hitch in hell.

Is it really worth it to die, to be dead, just to prove to everybody that you're not a coward?

You dont have to forgive something you love. You forgive the ones you dont love.

Jack Malloy was able to love the human race because he expected ahead-of-time to be let down by his friends and hurt by his enemies and betrayed by his leaders. He saw these things as natural reactions to be anticipated, instead of perfidies to be decried.

Nobody ever lied about being lonely.

They were like two philosophers starting from the same initial premise of life and each, by irrefutable argument, arriving at a diametrically opposite conclusion. Yet these two conclusions were like twin brothers of the same flesh and heritage and blood.

Warden had a theory about women: For years he had been asking them to sleep with him, the ones that interested him. Will you go to bed with me? and they were always shocked, even the rummy barflies. Of course, they always did, but that was only later, after he had fulfilled the proper requirements of approach. No woman ever said, Why, yes, I'd like to go to bed with you. They couldn't do it. It wasnt in them to be that honest.

ever seen The Warden make toward him, or toward anybody else. It warmed all through him like a drink. It was worth three months in any Black Hole

Maybe that's the reason we're on this earth, to learn to love without hating.

I love to touch you," Karen whispered, "to cuddle you, be fondled by you, love you. But it always leads to sex. You'll never know the times I've wanted to touch you, but not done it, because it always leads to sex.

Two people who have meant as much to each other as we have dont fade out of each other's lives," Karen said. "Of course they dont," Warden said. "They cant.

It was always unpleasant, moving like this; it always brought home to you the essential rootlessness of yourself and all men like you, always on the move, never really stopping anywhere, never really home.

Letters, like long-distance phone calls, could never convince him of the existence of another human far away existing in this same present he existed in. In reality, Violet did not exist until he saw her, then she began again where she had left off before. In-between she existed only in his mind, and how can you write a letter to your own imagination?