James Jones Men Quotations

It seems like every week we hear of new excitement or response from celebrities. Last week, James Earl Jones agreeing to attend, this week a signed beanie baby from Paul McCartney!

Up until then it had only been himself. Up to then it had been a private wrestle between him and himself. Nobody else much entered into it. After the people came into it he was, of course, a different man. Everything had changed then and he was no longer the virgin, with the virgin's right to insist upon platonic love. Life, in time, takes every maidenhead, even if it has to dry it up; it does not matter how the owner wants to keep it. Up to then he had been the young idealist. But he could not stay there. Not after the other people entered into it.

War don't ennoble men, it turns 'em into dogs. It poisons the soul.

The main trouble with being an honest man was that it lost you all your illusions.

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.

What if we do go to some other planet, discover it has life, and then not be able to get the baby snakes, or whatever they are, deathworms probably, out of the capsule, and then rather than sacrificing themselves and not coming back, the astronauts bring back the ultimate in irritating apartment pests. In 2106, people will be complaining about having deathworms in their bread.

He observed neighborhoods, people in neighborhoods, and he learned how they talk. I think that is the greatest achievement that he has done - he brought that to his plays, the language of people.