Quotes from James Lee Burke

Maybe you'll have better luck dealing with the dead than I. They go where they want. They sit on your bed at night and stand behind you in the mirror. Once they locate you, they never rest. And you know what's worse about them?" He smiled at me and didn't reply. "When it's your time, they'll be your escorts, and they won't be delivering you to a very good place. The dead are not given to mercy.

youth is its own narcotic, its impermanence our greatest worry and greatest loss. So why put on sackcloth and ashes over the memories we should guard like blue diamonds the rest of our lives?

If you grow up in an alcoholic home, you learn a lesson that never leaves you: The need to satisfy the addiction comes first; everything else is secondary. Daily betrayal becomes a way of life. We

There is a subculture in this country that seems to have no antecedent—a conflation of reality television, National Enquirer journalism, fundamentalist religion, militarism, and professional football. At the center is an adoration of celebrity, no matter how it is acquired or in what form it comes. Women

She was one of those women who seemed to choose solitude and plainness over beauty, and anger over happiness.

He bore his friends no animus for their innocence, but he hated the Krupps and DuPonts of the world and the politicians who became teary-eyed and saccharine as they waved the flag and sent others to die in the wars they caused.

How did a man know when it was his time? The answer is simple. There comes a moment when you no longer resist the inevitable and you accept the fact that billions have preceded you and that your death is not more important than theirs.

How did a man know when it was his time? The answer was simple. There comes a moment when you no longer resist the inevitable and you accept the fact that billions have preceded you and that your death is not more important than theirs.

May the road rise up to meet you May the wind be always at your back May the sun shine warm upon your face The rains fall soft upon your fields And until we meet again May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

His round, pink face was smiling and happy, his green eyes lighted with an alcoholic shine.

existed in inverse proportion to the defenselessness of the working people they exploited and injured.

never let the naysayers and those who are masters at inculcating self-doubt hold sway in your life.

felt foolish and wondered if I had entered that self-deluded stage in an aging man's life when others have to protect him from knowledge

Did you ever see a mob rush across town to do a good deed? Dave Robicheaux

Do you know why we drink? So we can do the things our conscience won't let us do when we're sober." If you're a souse, try to refute a statement like that.

These thoughts robbed the light from my eyes

The rumors that he did business with the Giacanos were I'm sure true. To what degree was up for debate. In the state of Louisiana, systemic venality is a given. The state's culture, mind-set, religious attitudes, and economics are no different from those of a Caribbean nation. The person who believes he can rise to a position of wealth and power in the state of Louisiana and not do business with the devil probably knows nothing about the devil and even less about Louisiana.

Who can make sense of the roles we play? If I could draw any conclusion about the long, depressing slog of human progress, it's the possibility that unseen elements lie just on the other side of the physical universe and that somehow we're actors on the stage of the Globe, right across the Thames from a place called Pissing Alley, whether William Shakespeare or Christopher Marlowe are

At a certain time in your life, you accept the fact that lunacy comes in many forms.

I read a poem once that had a line in it about a white radiance that stains eternity.

I hope you enjoy Wayfaring Stranger. It's the best book and the most biographical one I have written.

He scraped a pork chop and two eggs out of the frying pan and slid them off the spatula onto a plate. "You sure you don't want any?" "You know how much grease is in that stuff?" "That's why I've never had problems with arthritis. The grease in your food oils your joints and your connective tissue. Nobody in my family has ever had arthritis." "Because they didn't live long enough," I replied.

What Victor Charles and the NVA couldn't do to him, or the Mob or his enemies inside NOPD, Clete had done to himself with fried food, booze, weed, whites on the half shell, and calamitous affairs with strippers, junkies, and women who seemed to glow with both rut and neurosis.

because they listened to Black Sabbath." "Why didn't he get the injection table?