James Lee Burke

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

“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.”

“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.”

“. . . 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...”

“And every good artist knows that the gift comes from somewhere else, and it's there for a reason, and that's to make the world a better place.”