James Lee Burke
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?Collection: Yellow
God bless the Reference LibrariansCollection: Librarian
Every rejection is incremental payment on your dues that in some way will be translated back into your work.Collection: Rejects You
The story of Ulysses and Agamemnon and Menelaus, of Jesus, of the Good Knight of Chaucer, lives in every one of us.Collection: Jesus
Louisiana is a fresh-air mental asylum.Collection: Air
Never read bad stuff if you're an artist; it will impair your own game.Collection: Artist
Write for the love of your art. Someplace down the road, the money, the fame, they'll come, but by that time you won't be thinking in terms of money or fame.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Country
I think the "crime novel" has replaced the sociological novel of the 1930s. I think the progenitor of that tradition is James M. Cain, who in my view is the most neglected writer in American literature.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Hurt
Don't let anyone tell you that age purchases your freedom from fear of death.Collection: Age
We all end up in the same place. Some sonner than others.Collection: Ends
Success, like fashion, is a fickle companion and can leave one in the wink of an eye.Collection: Fashion
Why do I always feel like you're trying to staple my umbilical cord to the corner of your desk?Collection: Trying
Using a first-person narrator is simply a matter of hearing the voice inside yourself.Collection: Voice
The best thing about being a best-selling writer is being a best-selling writer. More seriously, today I can write full time and pay the bills.Collection: Writing
Today, there are more opportunities for writers in terms of access to larger success, but it's more difficult to publish a literary novel in the lower ranges. In other words, you almost have to hit a home run. You can hit a triple, maybe, but nobody's interested in a single.Collection: Running
You have two choices in life. You either die or do something with your time. You're going to be doing something - why not write?Collection: Writing
Neither our own passing nor the passing of an era is a tragedy, no matter how much we would like to think it is.Collection: Thinking
..why is it that in problematic situations almost everyone resorts to axioms and societal remedies that in actuality almost nobody believes in?...ask yourself, have you ever known anyone whose marriage was saved by a marriage counselor, whose drinking was cured by a psychiatrist, whose son was kept out of reform school by a social worker?Collection: Drinking
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.Collection: Stories
Never read bad stuff if you’re an artist; it will impair your own game. I don’t know if you ever played competitive tennis, but you learn not to watch bad tennis; it messes up your game. Art’s the same way.Collection: Reading