Quotes by James Lee Burke

“Theres nothing like rejection to make you do an inventory of yourself.”

“Every rejection is incremental payment on your dues that in some way will be translated back into your work.”

“Never read bad stuff if youre an artist; it will impair your own game.”

“The story of Ulysses and Agamemnon and Menelaus, of Jesus, of the Good Knight of Chaucer, lives in every one of us.”

“I used to save all my rejection slips because I told myself, one day Im going to autograph these and auction them. And then I lost the box.”

“Every artist knows that at some point the gift he has will eventually be made manifest. He will, at some point, see the work he has done improve the lives of others around him. But I think every artist also realizes that time will go away from him, too. Success is a fickle companion.”

“Today, there are more opportunities for writers in terms of access to larger success, but its more difficult to publish a literary novel in the lower ranges. In other words, you almost have to hit a home run. You can hit a triple, maybe, but nobodys interested in a single.”

“The only thing an artist has to remember is to never lose faith in his vision.”

“I wouldnt write anything autobiographical. If youve lived a life like Laurence of Arabia, it might be a consideration, but otherwise its a little bit vain, it seems to me.”

“We decry violence all the time in this country, but look at our history. We were born in a violent revolution, and weve been in wars ever since. Were not a pacific people.”

. . . I had found the edge. The place where you unstrap all your fastenings to the earth, to what you are what you have been, where you flame out on the edge of the spheres, and the sun and moon become eclipsed and the world below is as dead and remote and without interest as if it were glazed with ice.

And every good artist knows that the gift comes from somewhere else, and its there for a reason, and thats to make the world a better place.

Humility is not a virtue in a writer, it is an absolute necessity.

Some people say you pick up the Dirty Boogie where you left it off. Others say you pick it up where you would have been had you never gotten off it.

But no one could say he hadnt gotten even. He could not count the field women whom he had sexually degraded and demoralized and in whom he had left his seed so their bastard children would be a daily visual reminder of what a plantation white man could do to a plantation black woman whenever he wanted, nor could he count the black men whom he had made fear his blackjack as they would fear Satan himself, making each of them a lifetime enemy of all white people.

I looked at Lucas with the pang that a parent feels when he knows his child will be hurt and that its no ones fault and that to try to preempt the rites of passage is an act of contempt for the childs courage.

writing is like being in love. You never get better at it or learn more about it. The day you think you do is the day you lose it. Robert Frost called his work a lovers quarrel with the world. Its ongoing. It has neither a beginning nor an end. You dont have to worry about learning things. The fire of ones art burns all the impurities from the vessel that contains it.

As I was to learn, patience and latitude and even humility are, paradoxically, the handmaidens of wealth, because virtue is costly only for those who own nothing else.

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.

...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.