174 Quotes by James Lee Burke

"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."

"We all end up in the same place. Some sonner than others."

"Don't undo a brave and noble deed. Don't rob yourself of your own virtue."

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

"I could only wonder again at the white race's naïveté in always sending forth our worst members as our emissaries."

"Hackberry Holland's greatest fear was his fellow man's propensity to act collectively, in militaristic lockstep, under the banner of God and country. Mobs did not rush across town to do good deeds, and in Hackberry's view, there was no more odious taint on any social or political endeavor than universal approval."

"But the participants [in war] never forgot the details of their experience, and like the Wandering Jew, they were condemned to remain their own history books, each containing a story they could not pass on to others and from which no one would learn anything of value."

"Neither our own passing nor the passing of an era is a tragedy, no matter how much we would like to think it is."

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

"Never read bad stuff if you're an artist; it will impair your own game. I don't know if you ever played competitive tennis, but you learn not to watch bad tennis; it messes up your game. Art's the same way."