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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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James Lee Burke
Age: 87
Born: 1936
Born: December 5
Author
Novelist
Writer
Houston
Texas
Humans
Skins
Tragedy
Remain
Silent
Inside
Residence
Takes
Occurs
Forget
Skin
Human
Stranger

More quotes by James Lee Burke

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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?
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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.
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Every rejection is incremental payment on your dues that in some way will be translated back into your work.
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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?
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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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Louisiana is a fresh-air mental asylum.
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What's the worst thing about getting old? Getting old.
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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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God bless the Reference Librarians
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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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There is no higher form of artistic expression then film
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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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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.
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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.
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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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Success, like fashion, is a fickle companion and can leave one in the wink of an eye.
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Age is a clever thief. It takes a little from you each day, so you're not aware of your loss until it'd irreversible.
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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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.
James Lee Burke
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The only thing an artist has to remember is to never lose faith in his vision.
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