Cotton Tenants Quotes

“Through ignorance and shock and rage fully as much as thorough bias, the reporters take what they find as representative of the South as a whole.
What they find is, to be sure, not a circumstance on what in the course of time seems likely to happen in the South as a whole. But what they find is also not true of the general South as the South is today, and day by day. And if the truth is not only more interesting and more complex but also more valuable than falsehood, then the truth had better be recognized.”
― James Agee, Cotton Tenants: Three Families

“A civilization which for any reason puts a human life at a disadvantage; or a civilization which can exist only by putting human life at a disadvantage; is worthy neither of the name nor of continuance.”
― James Agee, Cotton Tenants: Three Families

“But in the long run I suspect the fault, dear Fortune, is in me: that I hate any job on earth, as a job and hindrance and semisuicide.”
― James Agee, Cotton Tenants: Three Families