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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.

James Lee Burke

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James Lee Burke
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: December 5
Author
Novelist
Writer
Houston
Texas
Next
Pipe
Happens
Crack
Give
Cracks
Giving
Scientist
Going
Figure
Figures
Somebody
Rocket
Happen
Rockets

More quotes by 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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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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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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I could only wonder again at the white race's naïveté in always sending forth our worst members as our emissaries.
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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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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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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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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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And like most middle-aged people who hear the clock ticking in their lives, I had come to resent a waste or theft of my time that was greater than any theft of my goods or money.
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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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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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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There is no higher form of artistic expression then film
James Lee Burke
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God bless the Reference Librarians
James Lee Burke
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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.
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.
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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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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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