James Jones: Trending quotes (page 3)

“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.”

James Jones book 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)

Summer

“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.”

James Jones book 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

War

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

James Jones book 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)

Madness

“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.”

James Jones

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

Sea

“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.”

James Jones book From Here to Eternity

From Here to Eternity (1951)

Light , Time , Horse

“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.”

James Jones book The Thin Red Line

First lines
The Thin Red Line (1962)