Quotes from James Lee Burke

You treat loss just like death. It visits everyone and you don't let it prevail in your life.

I will not accept my daughter's death. I will find a way to pull her back through the veil or untether myself and lie down in the bottom of a boat that has no oars and float down the Columbia and into the Pacific, where she will be waiting for me somewhere beyond the sun.

The word criminal is more an emotional than legal term. Go to any U.S. post office and view the faces on the wanted posters. Like Dick Tracy caricatures, they stare out of the black-and-white photographs often taken in late-night booking rooms—unshaved, pig snouted, rodent eyed, hare lipped, reassuring us that human evil is always recognizable and that consequently we will never be its victim. But

But every longtime cop will tell you that the criminals who scared him most were the ones who looked and talked like the rest of us and committed deeds that no one, absolutely no one, ever wants to have knowledge of. Five

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

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.

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.

My experience has been that people who die for causes have few friends in death.

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

A lie is an act of theft. It steals peoples faith and makes them resent themselves

To misuse one's talent, to be cavalier about it, to set it aside because of fear or sloth is unpardonable.

Don't let anyone tell you that age purchases your freedom from fear of death.