Quotes from James Jones

Just where is, he thought, the line that separates insanity?

Conviction and intensity are not the coin of truth, they alone can never buy it.

Whether maybe, strangest possibility of all, it was that love between a man and a woman happened to them all this way, was born full-grown from the copulation of a chance situation with a meaningless coincidence.

He was also wondering, as he dressed, at the humiliations men will suffer for a woman that they will not suffer for any other thing, even for their politics.

Sin is obviously relative to the man, and not a universal attribute.

There were times when Prewitt felt a special quality in himself, a strange unpleasant quality that seemed to force everyone he touched into making drastic decisions about their own lives, no wonder people did not like to be around him.

Maybe there were things in themselves men should not look at, just as there were things in the very deep bottom of the sea that it was better that men did not know about.

once in a dream somewhere, sometime, someplace, they had managed for a moment to touch another human soul and understand it.

There was a cool calm solace of protection in the unreasoning rage. But his mind was functioning enough to recognize it was a false protection.

he never was so lonely when he was alone as when he was in the midst of people.

The women ran this world; and nobody knew it better than a man in love.

I say plan for the future, sure. But dont let the plans for the future that there may not be any of, displace what little life you can live now.

I'm the kind of a guy who dont like to get too close to any individual, to see his faults; if I do, it shuts off the love I feel; then I get angry and hate myself for it afterwards; and if I have to stay close to the guy, or the thing, I eventually get to hate him, or it, too.

Funny how the little things like a smoke seemed so wonderful and good when you were bad off and you thought if I ever get out of this one I'll take more time to enjoy the little things. And then you never hardly noticed them when everything was going good in your favor again.

suddenly you discovered you had it and had had it a long time without knowing it. That was the way it was with pain.

He felt a very great tenderness, such as one feels with a beautiful child, and with it the same selfish unreasonable urge to protect it from all the things it does not know yet, not because of saving it hurt, but to keep it beautiful.

In crisis, the Old Army maxim ran, seek refuge in anonymity.

You see, as I go along, I've come to consider bravery as just about the most pernicious of virtues. Bravery is a horrible thing. The human race has it left over from the animal world and we can't get rid of it.