Mg Nelson > Mg's Quotes

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
― Dr. Seuss

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“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

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

“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

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

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

“...young people...who were casually profane, as though the validation of their own power could be achieved only by their assault on the sensibilities of others.”
― James Lee Burke, Heartwood

“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

“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

“I used to know a carnival man turned preacher who said the key to his success was understanding the people of what he called Snake's Navel, Arkansas. He said in Snake's Navel, the biggest thing going on Saturday night was the Dairy Queen. He said you could get the people there to do damn near anything --pollute their own water, work at five-dollar-an-hour jobs, drive fifty miles to a health clinic-- as long as you packaged it right. That meant you gave them a light show and faith healings and blow-down-the-walls gospel music with a whole row of American flags across the stage. He said what they liked best, though --what really got them to pissing all over themselves-- was to be told it was other people going to hell and not them. He said people in Snake's Navel wasn't real fond of homosexuals and Arabs and Hollywood Jews, although he didn't use them kinds of terms in his sermons.”
― James Lee Burke, Swan Peak

“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

“The wind smelled of humus, lichen, the musky odor of pecan husks broken under the shoe, a sunshower on the fields across the bayou. But any poetry that might have been contained in that moment was lost when I stared into Honoria's face, convinced that human insanity was as close to our fingertips as the act of rubbing fog off a window pane.”
― James Lee Burke, Crusader's Cross

“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

“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

“There'll be times when the only refuge is books. Then you'll read as if you meant it, as if your life depended on it.”
― Ken Bruen, The Killing of the Tinkers

“The Local Paper here asked that me books be banned........THE HIGHEST PRAISE for an Irish writer.”
― Ken Bruen

“She asked me why I always had something flip to say. I said that I didn't know, but having been blessed with the gift, I felt obliged to use it.”
― Robert Crais

“Adults always wonder what to say and how to say it when they're talking to a child. You want to be wise, but all you are is a child yourself in a larger body. Nothing is ever what it seems. The things that you think you know are never certain. I know that now. I wish that I didn't, but I do.”
― Robert Crais, The Last Detective

“People want you to be ordinary.”
― Robert Crais, The Last Detective

“Stalking the Angel
[Joe]"I could off anybody in this place five times over."
[Elvis]"Could you off someone and get away with you here?"
[Joe]Head shake. "I'm too good even for me.”
― Robert Crais, Stalking the Angel

“Pike put down the cat. He slid from Pike's arms like molasses and puddled at his feet.”
― Robert Crais, Chasing Darkness

“It's easy to sound good. All you do is leave in the parts where you act tough and forget the parts where you get shoved around.”
― Robert Crais, The Monkey's Raincoat

“I love L.A. It's a great, sprawling, spread-to-hell city that protects us by its sheer size. Four hundred sixty-five square miles. Eleven million beating hearts in Los Angeles County, documented and not. Eleven million. What are the odds? The girl raped beneath the Hollywood sign isn't your sister, the boy back-stroking in a red pool isn't your son, the splatter patterns on the ATM machine are sourceless urban art. We're safe that way. When it happens it's going to happen to someone else.”
― Robert Crais, L.A. Requiem