James Lee Burke

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.

Today, there are more opportunities for writers in terms of access to larger success, but it's 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 nobody's interested in a single.

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

Never read bad stuff if you're an artist; it will impair your own game.

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.

Using a first-person narrator is simply a matter of hearing the voice inside yourself.

When you find the right people, you never let go. The people who count are the ones who are your friends in lean times. You have all the friends you want when things are going well.

We decry violence all the time in this country, but look at our history. We were born in a violent revolution, and we've been in wars ever since. We're not a pacific people.

Age is a peculiar kind of thief. It slips up on you and steps inside your skin and is so quiet and methodical in its work that you never realize it has stolen your youth until you look into the mirror one morning and see a man you don't recognize.

THE ALLURE OF Montana is like a commitment to a narcotic; you can never use it up or get enough of it. Its wilderness areas probably resemble the earth on the first day of creation.

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

There's nothing like rejection to make you do an inventory of yourself.

You do it a day at a time. You write as well as you can, you put it in the mail, you leave it under submission, you never leave it at home.

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.

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

I wouldn't write anything autobiographical. If you've lived a life like Laurence of Arabia, it might be a consideration, but otherwise it's a little bit vain, it seems to me.

Money can't buy happiness but it'll sure keep a mess of grief off your front porch