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I used to save all my rejection slips because I told myself, one day I'm going to autograph these and auction them. And then I lost the box.

James Lee Burke

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James Lee Burke
Age: 87
Born: 1936
Born: December 5
Author
Novelist
Writer
Houston
Texas
Going
Autographs
Slips
Rejection
Boxes
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More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Louisiana is a fresh-air mental asylum.
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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.
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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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Using a first-person narrator is simply a matter of hearing the voice inside yourself.
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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I believe the causes that create them [serial killers] are theological in nature, rather than societal. I believe they make a conscious choice to erase God's thumbprint from their souls.
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If you put somebody on a crack pipe and give them a 9 mm Baretta, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what's going to happen next.
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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.
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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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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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There's nothing like rejection to make you do an inventory of yourself.
James Lee Burke
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What's the worst thing about getting old? Getting old.
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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We gain no wisdom by imposing our way on others.
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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Every rejection is incremental payment on your dues that in some way will be translated back into your work.
James Lee Burke