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James Lee Burke Quotes
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Why do I always feel like you're trying to staple my umbilical cord to the corner of your desk?
James Lee Burke
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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How do you explain to yourself the casual manner in which you threw your life away?
James Lee Burke
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Is there a design in the events of our lives? Or do things just happen, much like a junk yard falling down a staircase? If it's the latter, how do you deal with it?
James Lee Burke
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But perhaps age has taught me that the earth is still new, molten at the core and still forming, that black leaves in the winter forest will crawl with life in the spring, that our story is ongoing and it is indeed a crime to allow the heart's energies to dissipate with the fading of light on the horizon.
James Lee Burke
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And I wonder if there is any way to adequately describe the folly that causes us to undo all the great gifts of both Earth and Heaven.
James Lee Burke
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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
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Age is a clever thief. It takes a little from you each day, so you're not aware of your loss until it'd irreversible.
James Lee Burke
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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
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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
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Neither our own passing nor the passing of an era is a tragedy, no matter how much we would like to think it is.
James Lee Burke
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THE ALLURE OF Montana is like a commitment to a narcotic; you can never use it up or get enough of it. Its wilderness areas probably resemble the earth on the first day of creation.
James Lee Burke
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I could only wonder again at the white race's naïveté in always sending forth our worst members as our emissaries.
James Lee Burke
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In that moment, when watches and clocks misbehave and you feel a cold vapor wrap itself around your heart, you unconsciously draw a line at the bottom of a long column of numbers and come up with a sum. Perhaps it's one that fills you with contentment and endows you with a level of courage and an acceptance that you didn't know you possessed.Or maybe not.
James Lee Burke
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The system shaves the dice on the side of those with money and power, and anyone who believes otherwise deserves anything that happens to him.
James Lee Burke
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Don't undo a brave and noble deed. Don't rob yourself of your own virtue.
James Lee Burke
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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
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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
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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
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If we break promises to God, shouldn't we be allowed an occasional violation of our word to our friends and superiors?
James Lee Burke
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The real gladiators of the world are so humble in their origins and unremarkable in appearance that when we stand next to them in a grocery-store line, we never guess how brightly their souls can burn in the dark.
James Lee Burke
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Quote of the day
Life is pain, highness! Anyone who says differently is selling something.
William Goldman
James Lee Burke
Born:
December 5, 1936
(age 86)
Bio:
James Lee Burke is an American author of mysteries, best known for his Dave Robicheaux series.
Known for:
The Neon Rain (1987)
Cadillac Jukebox (1996)
Crusader's Cross: A Dave Robicheaux Novel (2005)
Purple cane road (2000)
Most used words:
god
,
lives
,
mind
,
people
,
time
,
dream
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