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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

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James Lee Burke
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: December 5
Author
Novelist
Writer
Houston
Texas
Rejects
Rejected
Rejection
Dues
Back
Incremental
Work
Translated
Every
Rejecting
Way
Payment

More quotes by 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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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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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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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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We all end up in the same place. Some sonner than others.
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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What's the worst thing about getting old? Getting old.
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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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
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One day you'll have a quiet heart.
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?
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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The only thing an artist has to remember is to never lose faith in his vision.
James Lee Burke
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There is no higher form of artistic expression then film
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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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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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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Is there a design in the events of our lives? Or do things just happen, much like a junk yard falling down a staircase? If it's the latter, how do you deal with it?
James Lee Burke
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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.
James Lee Burke