James Lee Burke quotes

I used to save all my rejection slips because I told myself, one day I'm going to autograph these and auction them. And then I lost the box. (James Lee Burke)

How do you explain to yourself the casual manner in which you threw your life away?

James Lee Burke

Every rejection is incremental payment on your dues that in some way will be translated back into your work.

James Lee Burke

If you put somebody on a crack pipe and give them a 9 mm Baretta, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what's going to happen next.

James Lee Burke

A lie is an act of theft. It steals peoples faith and makes them resent themselves.

James Lee Burke

God bless the Reference Librarians.

James Lee Burke

When people make a contract with the devil and give him an air-conditioned office to work in, he doesn't go back home easily.

James Lee Burke

One day you'll have a quiet heart.

James Lee Burke

There's nothing like rejection to make you do an inventory of yourself.

James Lee Burke

The only thing an artist has to remember is to never lose faith in his vision.

James Lee Burke

Never read bad stuff if you're an artist; it will impair your own game. (James Lee Burke)

We gain no wisdom by imposing our way on others.

James Lee Burke

It has been my experience that most human stories are circular rather than linear. Regardless of the path we choose, we somehow end up where we commenced - in part, I suspect, because the child who lives in us goes along for the ride.

James Lee Burke

When you find the right people, you never let go. The people who count are the ones who are your friends in lean times. You have all the friends you want when things are going well.

James Lee Burke

You do it a day at a time. You write as well as you can, you put it in the mail, you leave it under submission, you never leave it at home.

James Lee Burke

Humility is not a virtue in a writer, it is an absolute necessity.

James Lee Burke

That's one of the great advantages of age. You can say, I don't want to, I don't care, you can throw temper tantrums, and nobody minds.

James Lee Burke

Louisiana is a fresh-air mental asylum.

James Lee Burke

I looked at Lucas with the pang that a parent feels when he knows his child will be hurt and that it's no one's fault and that to try to preempt the rites of passage is an act of contempt for the child's courage.

James Lee Burke

Morpheus' gifts used to come to me in bottles, Beam and black Jack Daniel's, straight up with a frosted schooner of Jax on the side, while the rain poor down in the neon glow outside the window of an all-night bar not far from the Huey Long Bridge. In a half hour I could kick open a furnace door and fling into the flames all the snakes and squeaking bats that lived inside me. Except the next morning they would writhe with new life in the ashes and come back home, stinking and hungry.

James Lee Burke

The story of Ulysses and Agamemnon and Menelaus, of Jesus, of the Good Knight of Chaucer, lives in every one of us. (James Lee Burke)

We decry violence all the time in this country, but look at our history. We were born in a violent revolution, and we've been in wars ever since. We're not a pacific people.

James Lee Burke

Using a first-person narrator is simply a matter of hearing the voice inside yourself.

James Lee Burke

I feel blessed in the knowledge that I probably belong to the last generation that will remember what we call "traditional America."

James Lee Burke

What's the worst thing about getting old? Getting old.

James Lee Burke

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James Lee Burke

James Lee Burke - Image

Photo: Historyeducator, CC BY-SA 4.0

Occupation: American Author
Born: December 5, 1936
Quotes count: 36
Wikipedia: James Lee Burke

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