James T. Farrell Quotes & Sayings

All his life he had wished and waited, and there had been no change, except for the worse. — James T. Farrell

In New Haven, Conn., when I was growing up, there were two sorts of Irish. There were the "drugstore cowboy" micks, who hung around the Elm Street poolroom over Longley's Lunch. And there were the earnest young Irishmen who fought their way up from the Grand Avenue saloonkeeper backgrounds of their fathers, went through Yale Law School, and have now found high place by the preferment of local politics or in the teaching profession. — James T. Farrell

America is so vast that almost everything said about it is likely to be true, and the opposite is probably equally true. — James T. Farrell

He was still where he had always been. Just hoping. — James T. Farrell

He thought of how when you went out and listened to what people said, you heard all kinds of things, people washing their dirty linen in public, talking about friends and business and,gash, and it made him think how the world must be, at every minute, so full of people fighting, and jazzing, and dying, and working, and losing jobs, and it was a funny world, all right, full of funny people, millions of them. And he was only one out of all these millions of people, and they were all trying to get along, and many of them had gotten farther than he. — James T. Farrell

Studs Lonigan, on the verge of fifteen, and wearing his first suit of long trousers, stood in the bathroom with a Sweet Caporal pasted on his mug. — James T. Farrell

Ever since he had been a kid, he had wished and waited, and there had been no change except for the worst. — James T. Farrell

He told himself that he was a clown clean through. Every time a fly ball had been hit to him with men on the bases, he'd muffed it. Hoping for one thing, then another, and when he did get his chances -- foul ball.

Girls, too. He'd never held one. Twice Lucy had given him the cold shoulder. That girl he'd knelt next to at Christmas Mass in Saint Patrick's once -- cold shoulder. Never got beyond wishing with her. Now Catherine.

Football. He'd wanted to be a star high-school quarterback and he'd not had the guts to stay in school. Fighting. His kid brother had even cleaned him up. In the war when he'd tried to enlist, a leather-necked sergeant had laughed at him.

He was just an all-around no soap guy. — James T. Farrell

If you let conditions stop you from working, they'll always stop you. — James T. Farrell

Fitzgerald describes the social disillusionments and ballroom romanticism of the young people of the upper classes and the loneliness of Gatsby, who gives large parties and has an extensive social life; yet he is lonely, and his guests scarcely know him ... Hemingway's characters live in a tourist world, and one of their major problems is that of consuming time itself. It is interesting to observe that his works are written from the stand point of the spectator. His characters are usually people who are looking
looking at bullfights, scenery, and at one another across cafe tables. — James T. Farrell

Neither man nor God is going to tell me what to write. — James T. Farrell

There's one good kind of writer - a dead one. — James T. Farrell

Life is sad enough without people writing sad books. — James T. Farrell

He took a meditative puff on his stogy, and informed himself that time was a funny thing. Old Man Time just walked along, and he didn't even blow a How-do-you-do through his whiskers. He just walked on past you. Things just change. — James T. Farrell

So long, Lee. Give our regards to the Kaiser. And tell him there's a few boys on 58th Street who'll throw a party for him if he'll drop around. — James T. Farrell

He had come to America, haven of peace and liberty, and it, too, was joining the slaughter, fighting for the big capitalists. There was no peace for men, only murder, cruelty, brutality. — James T. Farrell

His face was a gaze of primal obtuseness. — James T. Farrell

The danger of censorship in cultural media increases in proportion to the degree to which one approaches the winning of a mass audience. — James T. Farrell

He was sad because he had grown up, and because the years passed like a river that no man could stop. — James T. Farrell

Life was hard on mothers; but then, they just didn't understand. — James T. Farrell

They served the rich, and tried to think that they were rich. — James T. Farrell