James Jones citations (52 citations, Page 2)

I suppose that sounds an awful lot like Wolfe, but if it does, it's exactly the way I feel.
Letter to his brother Jeff, from Hawaii (7 April 1941); p. 13
To Reach Eternity (1989)

“"You've killed me. Why'd you want to kill me," he said, and died. The expression of hurt surprise and wounded reproach and sheer inability to understand stayed on his face like a forgotten suitcase left at the station, and gradually hardened there. Prew stood looking down at him, still shocked by the reproving question.”

Help us translate this quote

James Jones livre From Here to Eternity

From Here to Eternity (1951)

“There're so many young guys, you know — young Americans and, yes, young men everywhere — a whole generation of people younger than me who have grown up feeling inadequate as men because they haven't been able to fight in a war and find out whether they are brave or not. Because it is in an effort to prove this bravery that we fight — in wars or in bars — whereas if a man were truly brave he wouldn't have to be always proving it to himself. So therefore I am forced to consider bravery suspect, and ridiculous, and dangerous. Because if there are enough young men like that who feel strongly enough about it, they can almost bring on a war, even when none of them want it, and are in fact struggling against having one. (And as far as modern war is concerned I am a pacifist. Hell, it isn't even war anymore, as far as that goes. It's an industry, a big business complex.) And it's a ridiculous thing because this bravery myth is something those young men should be able to laugh at. Of course the older men like me, their big brothers, and uncles, and maybe even their fathers, we don't help them any. Even those of us who don't openly brag. Because all the time we are talking about how scared we were in the war, we are implying tacitly that we were brave enough to stay. Whereas in actual fact we stayed because we were afraid of being laughed at, or thrown in jail, or shot, as far as that goes.”

Help us translate this quote

James Jones

The Paris Review interview (1958)

“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.”

Help us translate this quote

James Jones livre From Here to Eternity

First line. "Jones packs a hell of a lot into that first line. He tells you it's summer, he tells you it's morning, he tells you you're on an Army post with a soldier who's obviously leaving for someplace, and he gives you a thumbnail description of his hero. That's a good opening line." ~ Ed McBain (Evan Hunter) in Killer's Payoff (1958)
From Here to Eternity (1951)

“It will say just about everything I have ever had to say, or will ever have to say, on the human condition of war and what it means to us, as against what we claim it means to us.”

Help us translate this quote

James Jones livre Whistle

Introduction for his unfinished novel, Whistle (1978) the third part of his war trilogy (which was completed by Willie Morris); quoted in TIME magazine (13 March 1978) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,919437,00.html

“There's only a thin red line between the sane and the mad.”

Help us translate this quote

James Jones livre The Thin Red Line

"Old midwestern saying" created by Jones for his story, as stated in James Jones: An American Literary Orientalist Master (1998) by Steven R. Carter
The Thin Red Line (1962)

“Sometimes the air is awfully clear here. You can look off to sea and see the soft, warm, raggedy roof of clouds stretching on and on and on. It almost seems as if you can look right on into eternity.”

Help us translate this quote

James Jones

Letter to his brother Jeff, from Hawaii (22 March 1942); p. 17
To Reach Eternity (1989)

“Prew bit his lips. He got his envelope roll out of the wall locker and the combat pack off the bed foot. He laid them on the floor and opened the light pack. Everyone in the squadroom sat up and watched him silently and speculatively, as they might watch a sick horse upon whose time to die they had gotten up a pool.”

Help us translate this quote

James Jones livre From Here to Eternity

From Here to Eternity (1951)

“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.”

Help us translate this quote

James Jones livre The Thin Red Line

First lines
The Thin Red Line (1962)