John Burdett
John Burdett
John Patrick Burdett is a British crime novelist. He is the bestselling author of Bangkok 8 and its sequels, Bangkok Tattoo, Bangkok Haunts,The Godfather of Kathmandu, and Vulture Peak. His most recent novel in this series, The Bangkok Asset, was published on 4 August 2015...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth24 July 1951
karma mind suffering
You don't understand. I only prostitute the part of the body that isn't important, and nobody suffers except my karma a little bit. I don't do big harm. You prostitute your mind. Mind is seat of Buddha. What you do is very very bad. You should not use your mind in that way
mind world body
The function of the West is to turn bodies and minds into products. It cannot understand that the rest of the world holds this to be an obscenity, a corruption of our nirvanic nature.
buddhist mind contradiction
To a Buddhist, contradictions only exist in a mind that has been forced to cultivate them.
discovered earlier few lives people thailand total
I discovered that Thailand was one of those countries, like Sri Lanka and India, where memory of past lives used to be commonplace. Go back a few generations, and you find people talking about earlier lives with total certainty.
Las Vegas is the expression, in glitter and concrete, of America's brittle and mutating id.
advise agonizing aspiring block complain maybe novelists
'Shun security,' I advise aspiring novelists when they complain to me that they are stuck. 'Get disoriented. Maybe your agonizing writing block isn't agonizing enough. Your enemy is comfort.'
average based immensely interested money paris playing plugging publishers reader spend sure thriller
I think it is immensely difficult to get the U.S. interested in non-U.S. topics. I don't think this is because the average American reader is disinterested, but more because of publishers playing it safe: if a thriller based in L.A. is a sure winner, why spend money plugging one based in Paris - or Bangkok?
ambition attitude driven drives legitimate life people spent thai time totally understood
In essence, the Thai people are not materialistic at all. They're not in the least driven by the kind of ambition that drives us. The more I got to know them, and the more time I spent with them, the more I understood that this was a totally legitimate attitude to life, and why not?
telling
If the world is telling you you're successful, but you don't feel it, you might as well have failed.
intuitive shapes understanding
In the West, we've lost our intuitive understanding of how poverty shapes thinking.
although fascinated time
I'm fascinated by Buddhism. I adore Buddhism, and I read about it all the time, but I haven't formally become a Buddhist, although I don't really know why I haven't. I guess I feel I don't need to.
world amazing-places
The world other than as advertised can be an amazing place.
las-vegas expression glitter
Las Vegas is the expression, in glitter and concrete, of Americas brittle and mutating id.
people challenges stressed-out
There are plenty of brilliant people who are too stressed out to read challenging literary novels.