Quote

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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James Lee Burke
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: December 5
Author
Novelist
Writer
Houston
Texas
Talent
Fear
Cavalier
Unpardonable
Misuse
Sloth
Aside

More quotes by James Lee Burke

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We gain no wisdom by imposing our way on others.
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One day you'll have a quiet heart.
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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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Louisiana is a fresh-air mental asylum.
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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.
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There's nothing like rejection to make you do an inventory of yourself.
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What's the worst thing about getting old? Getting old.
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Using a first-person narrator is simply a matter of hearing the voice inside yourself.
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Don't let anyone tell you that age purchases your freedom from fear of death.
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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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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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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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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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?
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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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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 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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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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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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..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