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09a8f6c
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Louisiana is a fresh-air mental asylum.
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louisiana
insanity
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James Lee Burke |
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a385821
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I long ago became convinced that the most reliable source for arcane and obscure and seemingly unobtainable information does not lie with the government or law enforcement agencies. Apparently neither the CIA nor the military intelligence apparatus inside the Pentagon had even a slight inkling of the Soviet Union's impending collapse, right up to the moment the Kremlin's leaders were trying to cut deals for their memoirs with New York publi..
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James Lee Burke |
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7341a95
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When people make a contract with the devil and give him an air-conditioned office to work in, he doesn't go back home easily.
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dave-robicheaux
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James Lee Burke |
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9dad32f
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It has been my experience that most human stories are circular rather than linear. Regardless of the path we choose, we somehow end up where we commenced - in part, I suspect, because the child who lives in us goes along for the ride.
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James Lee Burke |
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0e67921
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I believe every...man remembers the girl he thinks he should have married. She reappears to him in his lonely moments, or he sees her in the face of a young girl in the park, buying a snowball under an oak tree by the baseball diamond. But she belongs to back there, to somebody else, and that thought sometimes rends your heart in a way that you never share with anyone else.
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James Lee Burke |
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9da3f34
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How do you explain to yourself the casual manner in which you threw your life away?
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James Lee Burke |
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25a1bb7
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If there is any human tragedy, there is only one, and it occurs when we forget who we are and remain silent while a stranger takes up residence inside our skin.
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James Lee Burke |
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2c63938
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I also believe my home state is cursed by ignorance and poverty and racism, much of it deliberately inculcated to control a vulnerable electorate. And I believe many of the politicians in Louisiana are among the most stomach-churning examples of white trash and venality I have ever known. To me, the fact that large numbers of people find them humorously picaresque is mind numbing, on a level with telling fond tales of one's rapist.
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politics
louisiana
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James Lee Burke |
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7ecb424
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Every third night a commitee holds a meeting in my head.
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James Lee Burke |
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9d3cc08
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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.
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James Lee Burke |
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49ffead
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How do you caution a fawn about a cigarette a motorist has just flipped from his car window into a patch of yellow grass, or tell a sparrow that winged creatures eventually plummet to earth?
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James Lee Burke |
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c055dac
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Then the sun broke above the crest of the hills and the entire countryside looked soaked in blood, the arroyos deep in shadow, the cones of dead volcanoes stark and biscuit-colored against the sky. I could smell pinion trees, wet sage, woodsmoke, cattle in the pastures, and creek water that had melted from snow. I could smell the way the country probably was when it was only a dream in the mind of God.
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James Lee Burke |
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b7e142f
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I believe the causes that create them [serial killers] are theological in nature, rather than societal. I believe they make a conscious choice to erase God's thumbprint from their souls.
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James Lee Burke |
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d79ef13
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Why do I always feel like you're trying to staple my umbilical cord to the corner of your desk?
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James Lee Burke |
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52cfc01
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No matter what occurs in your life, no matter how bad the circumstances seem to be, you must never consider a dishonorable act as a viable alternative.
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James Lee Burke |
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f827043
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But no one could say he hadn't gotten even. He could not count the field women whom he had sexually degraded and demoralized and in whom he had left his seed so their bastard children would be a daily visual reminder of what a plantation white man could do to a plantation black woman whenever he wanted, nor could he count the black men whom he had made fear his blackjack as they would fear Satan himself, making each of them a lifetime enemy..
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hatred
rape
racism
fear
degrade
plantations
southern
satan
crime
oppression
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James Lee Burke |
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e9c68b1
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All drunks, particularly those who grew up in alcoholic homes, have that same sense of angst and trepidation, one that has no explainable origins. The fear is not necessarily self-centered, either. It's like watching someone point a revolver at his temple while he cocks and dry-fires the mechanism, over and over again, until the cylinder rotates a loaded chamber into firing position.
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James Lee Burke |
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2041449
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The wrong people always worry. The people who are the real problem never worry about anything.
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James Lee Burke |
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0aede44
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In that moment, when watches and clocks misbehave and you feel a cold vapor wrap itself around your heart, you unconsciously draw a line at the bottom of a long column of numbers and come up with a sum. Perhaps it's one that fills you with contentment and endows you with a level of courage and an acceptance that you didn't know you possessed. Or maybe not.
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James Lee Burke |
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5f27b68
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The wind smelled of humus, lichen, the musky odor of pecan husks broken under the shoe, a sunshower on the fields across the bayou. But any poetry that might have been contained in that moment was lost when I stared into Honoria's face, convinced that human insanity was as close to our fingertips as the act of rubbing fog off a window pane.
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James Lee Burke |
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ff049dc
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In a badass, beer-glass brawl, would you rather have an academic liberal covering your back or a hobnailed redneck?
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James Lee Burke |
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1837da3
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You've got another problem. Like most white trash, you're disrespectful to your betters and proud of your stupidity and ignorance.
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James Lee Burke |
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3e6bd63
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The evening sky was streaked with purple, the color of torn plums, and a light rain had started to fall when I came to the end of the blacktop road that cut through twenty miles of thick, almost impenetrable scrub oak and pine and stopped at the front gate of Angola penitentiary.
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James Lee Burke |
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5fb374b
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Sometimes he comes to me in my dreams, and I wonder if ironically all our stories were written on his skin back there in Texas City in 1947. Or maybe that's just poetic illusion purchased by time. But even in the middle of an Indian summer's day, when the sugarcane is beaten with purple and gold light in the fields and the sun is both warm and cool on your skin at the same time, when I know that the earth is a fine place after all, I have t..
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James Lee Burke |
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f9d78e5
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Colored or not, we all pick the white man's cotton.
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cajun
louisiana
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James Lee Burke |
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85a48f3
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I used to know a carnival man turned preacher who said the key to his success was understanding the people of what he called Snake's Navel, Arkansas. He said in Snake's Navel, the biggest thing going on Saturday night was the Dairy Queen. He said you could get the people there to do damn near anything --pollute their own water, work at five-dollar-an-hour jobs, drive fifty miles to a health clinic-- as long as you packaged it right. That me..
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James Lee Burke |
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997f4c4
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No matter what the other side does to you, you grin and walk through the cannon smoke. It drives them crazy.
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James Lee Burke |
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c9c38f3
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and I wonder if there is any way to adequately describe the folly that causes us to undo all the great gifts of both Earth and Heaven.
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heaven
mistakes-man-makes
folly
gifts
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James Lee Burke |
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6211a26
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If I've learned anything at all from my years, it's the simple lesson that human beings are always more complicated, brave, long-suffering, and, ultimately, heroic than we ever guessed, and that none of us completely understands another, no matter how intimate we are with them.
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James Lee Burke |
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350052f
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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 ice.
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wisdom
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James Lee Burke |
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b497c93
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I bet that guy could steal the stink off of shit
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James Lee Burke |
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ed6e54f
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And I suppose that what I have learned is a lesson that the years, or self-concern, had begun to hide from me, namely, that the bravest and most loyal and loving people in the world seldom have heroic physical characteristics or the auras of saints. In fact, their faces are like those of people whom you might randomly pull out of a supermarket line, their physical makeup so nondescript and unremarkable that it's hard to remember what they l..
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James Lee Burke |
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58c8c10
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My experience with age it instills a degree of patience in some, leaves the virtuous spiritually unchanged, feeds the character defects in others, and brings little wisdom to any of us.
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James Lee Burke |
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65b383b
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No one likes to be afraid. Fear is the enemy of love & faith & it robs us of our sleep & our sunrise & makes us treacherous & venal& fills our glands with toxins & effaces our identity & gives flight to any vestige of self respect. If you have ever been afraid, truly afraid, in a way that makes your hair soggy with sweat & turns your skin gray & fouls your blood & spiritually eviscerates you to the point you cannot pray, lest your prayers b..
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James Lee Burke |
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a783c8b
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I would almost forget about Ida Durbin. But a sin of omission, if indeed that's what it was, can be like the rusty head of a hatchet buried in the heartwood of a tree -- it eventually finds the teeth of a whirling saw blade.
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James Lee Burke |
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4311527
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I had seen a dawn like this one only twice in my life: once in Vietnam, when a Bouncing Betty had risen from the earth on a night trail and twisted its tentacles of light around my thighs, and years earlier outside of Franklin, Louisiana, when my father and I discovered the body of a labor organizer who had been crucified with sixteen-penny nails, ankle and wrist, against a barn wall. - Sunset Limited
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James Lee Burke |
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76d3c98
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Mortality is not kind, and do not let anyone tell you it is. If there is such a thing as wisdom, and I have serious doubts about its presence in my own life, it lies in the acceptance of the human condition and perhaps the knowledge that those who have passed on are still with us, out there in the mist, showing us the way, sometimes uttering a word of caution from the shadows, sometimes visiting us in our sleep, as bright as a candle burnin..
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James Lee Burke |
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38145bb
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It's a great burden, being one of the good guys.
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James Lee Burke |
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a7083a8
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One day you'll have a quiet heart.
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James Lee Burke |
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2102409
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This is Louisiana, Dave. Guatemala North. Quit pretending it's the United States. Life will make a lot more sense," he said."
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James Lee Burke |
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2a11b75
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Coincidence is your Higher Power acting with anonymity.
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James Lee Burke |
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9572d77
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Somehow sleep allows us to see clearly those very things that are obscured by the light of day.
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James Lee Burke |
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caa76b5
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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.
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James Lee Burke |
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3bfd7e1
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We all have an extended family, people whom we recognize as our own as soon as we see them.
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James Lee Burke |