2 quotations found:

Physically Agee was quite powerful, in the deceptive way of
uninsistent large men. In movement he was rather graceless. His hands were
large, long, bony, light, and uncared for. His gestures were one of the
memorable things about him. He seemed to model, fight, and stroke his phrases
as he talked. He talked his prose, Agee prose. It was hardly a twentieth
century style; it had Elizabethan colors. Yet it had extraordinarily
knowledgeable contemporary context. It rolled just as it reads; but he made it
sound natural -- something just there in the air like any other part of the
world. How he did this no one knows. You would have blinked, gaped, and very
likely run from this same talk delivered without his mysterious ability. It
wasn't a matter of show, and it wasn't necessarily bottle-inspired. Sheer
energy of imagination was what lay behind it. This he matched with physical
energy. Many a man or woman has fallen exhausted to sleep at four in the
morning bang in the middle of a remarkable Agee performance, and later learned
that the man had continued it somewhere else until six. Like many born writers
who are floating in the illusory amplitude of their youth, Agee did a great
deal of writing in the air. Often you had the impulse to gag him and tie a pen
to his hand. That wasn't necessary; he was an exception among talking writers.
He wrote -- devotedly and incessantly.

Source: "James Agee in 1936," forward to later edition of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
Date: 2001

The days with the families came abruptly to an end. Their real
content and meaning has all been show. The writing they induced is, among
other things, the reflection of one resolute, private rebellion. Agee's
rebellion was unquenchable, self-damaging, deeply principled, infinitely
costly, and ultimately priceless.

Source: "James Agee in 1936," forward to later edition of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
Date: 2001