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There's nothing like rejection to make you do an inventory of yourself.

James Lee Burke

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James Lee Burke
Age: 87
Born: 1936
Born: December 5
Author
Novelist
Writer
Houston
Texas
Rejected
Rejection
Nothing
Make
Like
Inventory
Rejecting
Rejects

More quotes by James Lee Burke

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Success, like fashion, is a fickle companion and can leave one in the wink of an eye.
James Lee Burke
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I feel blessed in the knowledge that I probably belong to the last generation that will remember what we call traditional America.
James Lee Burke
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You do it a day at a time. You write as well as you can, you put it in the mail, you leave it under submission, you never leave it at home.
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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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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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.
James Lee Burke
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What's the worst thing about getting old? Getting old.
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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We gain no wisdom by imposing our way on others.
James Lee Burke
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..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?
James Lee Burke
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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.
James Lee Burke
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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
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To misuse one's talent, to be cavalier about it, to set it aside because of fear or sloth is unpardonable.
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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Using a first-person narrator is simply a matter of hearing the voice inside yourself.
James Lee Burke
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The only thing an artist has to remember is to never lose faith in his vision.
James Lee Burke
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And every good artist knows that the gift comes from somewhere else, and it's there for a reason, and that's to make the world a better place.
James Lee Burke
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That's one of the great advantages of age. You can say, I don't want to, I don't care, you can throw temper tantrums, and nobody minds.
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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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