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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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James Lee Burke
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: December 5
Author
Novelist
Writer
Houston
Texas
Stand
Burn
Lines
Store
Dark
Stores
Gladiators
Next
Appearance
Unremarkable
Soul
Souls
Brightly
Real
Humble
Grocery
Never
Guess
Origins
World
Line
Groceries

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There's nothing like rejection to make you do an inventory of yourself.
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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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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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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.
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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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There is no higher form of artistic expression then film
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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.
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God bless the Reference Librarians
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Using a first-person narrator is simply a matter of hearing the voice inside yourself.
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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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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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Louisiana is a fresh-air mental asylum.
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We gain no wisdom by imposing our way on others.
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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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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.
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We all end up in the same place. Some sonner than others.
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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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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.
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One day you'll have a quiet heart.
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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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