James Lee Burke
James Lee Burke
James Lee Burkeis an American author of mysteries, best known for his Dave Robicheaux series. He has won an Edgar Award for Black Cherry Bluesand an Edgar Award for Cimarron Rose, and has also been presented with the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. The Robicheaux character has been portrayed twice on screen, first by Alec Baldwinand then Tommy Lee Jones. Burke's 1982 novel, Two for Texas, was made into a 1998 TV Movie by the same...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
CountryUnited States of America
people few-friends causes
My experience has been that people who die for causes have few friends in death.
art reading games
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.
loyalty substitutes
There's no substitute for loyalty.
writing worry silence
If you don't compromise your gift, if you write each day as well as you can, and then submit your work and not worry about it and go on to the next piece, you suddenly find oddly enough that you're no more interested in the applause than the silence. You don't hear either one of them. You can never listen to the naysayers. If you do you won't survive.
hurt children parent
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.
commitment use montana
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.
grief money-cant-buy-happiness mess
Money can't buy happiness but it'll sure keep a mess of grief off your front porch.
dream men glasses
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?" The Glass Rainbow, p. 138
promise our-words break
If we break promises to God, shouldn't we be allowed an occasional violation of our word to our friends and superiors?
home air giving
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.
way gains imposing
We gain no wisdom by imposing our way on others.
spring heart winter
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.
heaven earth way
...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.
dream past land
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.