James Lee Burke > Quotes

“Louisiana is a fresh-air mental asylum.”
― James Lee Burke, Pegasus Descending

“God bless the Reference Librarians”
― James Lee Burke

“I long ago became convinced that the most reliable source for arcane and obscure and seemingly unobtainable information does not lie with the government or law enforcement agencies. Apparently neither the CIA nor the military intelligence apparatus inside the Pentagon had even a slight inkling of the Soviet Union's impending collapse, right up to the moment the Kremlin's leaders were trying to cut deals for their memoirs with New York publishers. Or, if a person really wishes a lesson in the subjective nature of official information, he can always call the IRS and ask for help with his tax forms, then call back a half hour later and ask the same questions to a different representative. So where do you go to find a researcher who is intelligent, imaginative, skilled in the use of computers, devoted to discovering the truth, and knowledgeable about science, technology, history, and literature, and who usually works for dirt and gets credit for nothing? After lunch I drove to the city library on Main and asked the reference librarian to find what she could on Junior Crudup.”
― James Lee Burke, Last Car to Elysian Fields

“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, In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead

“A lie is an act of theft. It steals people's faith and makes them resent themselves”
― James Lee Burke, Pegasus Descending

“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, The Glass Rainbow

“How do you explain to yourself the casual manner in which you threw your life away?”
― James Lee Burke, Swan Peak

“I believe every...man remembers the girl he thinks he should have married. She reappears to him in his lonely moments, or he sees her in the face of a young girl in the park, buying a snowball under an oak tree by the baseball diamond. But she belongs to back there, to somebody else, and that thought sometimes rends your heart in a way that you never share with anyone else.”
― James Lee Burke, Black Cherry Blues

“Writing is like being in love. You never get better at it or learn more about it. The day you think you do is the day you lose it. Robert Frost called his work a lover's quarrel with the world. It's ongoing. It has neither a beginning nor an end. You don't have to worry about learning things. The fire of one's art burns all the impurities from the vessel that contains it.”
― James Lee Burke

“Humility is not a virtue in a writer, it is an absolute necessity.”
― James Lee Burke

“Money can't buy happiness but it'll sure keep a mess of grief off your front porch.”
― 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, Heartwood

“And every good artist knows that the gift comes from somewhere else, and it's there for a reason, and that's to make the world a better place.”
― James Lee Burke

“And like most middle-aged people who hear the clock ticking in their lives, I had come to resent a waste or theft of my time that was greater than any theft of my goods or money.”
― James Lee Burke

“I sometimes subscribe to the belief that all historical events occur simultaneously, like a dream in the mind of God. Perhaps it is only man who views time sequentially and tries to impose a solar calendar upon it. What if other people, both dead and unborn, are living out their lives in the same space we occupy, without our knowledge or consent?”
― James Lee Burke, The Glass Rainbow

“Age is a peculiar kind of thief. It slips up on you and steps inside your skin and is so quiet and methodical in its work that you never realize it has stolen your youth until you look into the mirror one morning and see a man you don't recognize.”
― James Lee Burke, Creole Belle

“If there is any human tragedy, there is only one, and it occurs when we forget who we are and remain silent while a stranger takes up residence inside our skin.”
― James Lee Burke, The Glass Rainbow

“Every third night a commitee holds a meeting in my head.”
― James Lee Burke, Rain Gods

“I also believe my home state is cursed by ignorance and poverty and racism, much of it deliberately inculcated to control a vulnerable electorate. And I believe many of the politicians in Louisiana are among the most stomach-churning examples of white trash and venality I have ever known. To me, the fact that large numbers of people find them humorously picaresque is mind numbing, on a level with telling fond tales of one's rapist.”
― James Lee Burke, Creole Belle

“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

“Age is a clever thief. It takes a little from you each day, so you're not aware of your loss until it's irreversible.”
― James Lee Burke, Light of the World

“Hackberry Holland's greatest fear was his fellow man's propensity to act collectively, in militaristic lockstep, under the banner of God and country. Mobs did not rush across town to do good deeds, and in Hackberry's view, there was no more odious taint on any social or political endeavor than universal approval.”
― James Lee Burke, Feast Day of Fools

“I'm over the hill for come-on lines. On a quiet day, I can hear my liver rotting. For exercise, I fall down.”
― James Lee Burke, Creole Belle

“How do you caution a fawn about a cigarette a motorist has just flipped from his car window into a patch of yellow grass, or tell a sparrow that winged creatures eventually plummet to earth?”
― James Lee Burke, In the Moon of Red Ponies

“No matter what occurs in your life, no matter how bad the circumstances seem to be, you must never consider a dishonorable act as a viable alternative.”
― James Lee Burke, In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead

“I believe the causes that create them [serial killers] are theological in nature, rather than societal. I believe they make a conscious choice to erase God's thumbprint from their souls.”
― James Lee Burke, Crusader's Cross

“The best moments in life are not the kind many historians record.”
― James Lee Burke, Jolie Blon's Bounce

“Why do I always feel like you're trying to staple my umbilical cord to the corner of your desk?”
― James Lee Burke, Swan Peak

“Then the sun broke above the crest of the hills and the entire countryside looked soaked in blood, the arroyos deep in shadow, the cones of dead volcanoes stark and biscuit-colored against the sky. I could smell pinion trees, wet sage, woodsmoke, cattle in the pastures, and creek water that had melted from snow. I could smell the way the country probably was when it was only a dream in the mind of God.”
― James Lee Burke, Jesus Out to Sea

“In the alluvial sweep of the land, I thought I could see the past and the present and the future all at once, as though time were not sequential in nature but took place without a beginning or an end, like a flash of green light rippling outward from the center of creation, not unlike a dream inside the mind of God.”
― James Lee Burke, The Glass Rainbow