James Agee Quotes

We are all born mad. Some remain so.

There is a pleasure in being mad which none but madmen know.

When you are insane, you are busy being insane - all the time.

There is a close connection between lack of confidence and the passionate state of mind.

Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man.

Who but the mad would choose to keep on living? In the end, aren't we all just a little crazy?

Madness, as I understood it from books, meant a person who was open to the high white whine of everything.

I always thought insanity would be a dark, bitter feeling, but it is drenching and delicious if you really roll around in it.

Sometimes I feel sure he is as mad as a hatter and then, just as he is at his maddest, I find there is a method in his madness.

I felt lethal, on the verge of frenzy. My nightly bloodlust overflowed into my days and I had to leave the city. My mask of sanity was a victim of impending slippage. This was the bone season for me and I needed a vacation.

The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

That's the terrible part. I swear to God I'm a madman.

From time to time, I do consider that I might be mad. Like any self-respecting lunatic, however, I am always quick to dismiss any doubts about my sanity.

Sanity is very rare; every man almost and every woman has a dash of madness.

Insanity is just a state of mind.

--Why are we fighting them? --They're mad. We're sane. --How do we know? --That we're sane? --Yes. --Am I sane? --To all appearances. --And you, do you consider yourself sane? --I do. --Well, there you have it. --But don't they also consider themselves sane? --I think they know. Deep down. That they're not sane. --How must that make them feel? --Terrible, I should think. They must fight ever more fiercely, in order to deny what they know to be true. That they are not sane.

When you are insane, you are busy being insane-all the time ... when I was crazy, that was all I was.

As an experience, madness is terrific ... and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about.

I'm cold as a razor blade, inches from madness.

I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself

Insanity hovered close at hand, like an eager waiter at an expensive restaurant.

Insecurity is not just a state of mind.

The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.

Madness has its own dynamism. It just goes on.