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Jansenist
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James Lee Burke |
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Who can make sense of the roles we play? If I could draw any conclusion about the long, depressing slog of human progress, it's the possibility that unseen elements lie just on the other side of the physical universe and that somehow we're actors on the stage of the Globe, right across the Thames from a place called Pissing Alley, whether William Shakespeare or Christopher Marlowe are
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James Lee Burke |
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because they listened to Black Sabbath." "Why didn't he get the injection table?"
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James Lee Burke |
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I don't try to correct yesterday's mistakes in the present. I mark them off. I truly mark them off. A person hurts me only once.
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James Lee Burke |
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I always had the sense that Desmond was trying to shrink inside his clothes, as though both fear and a great sadness lived inside him.
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James Lee Burke |
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Unfortunately, at a certain age, wanting something you can't be or wanting what you can't have can become a way of life.
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James Lee Burke |
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Want to talk later? After
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James Lee Burke |
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wimples
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James Lee Burke |
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the belly button; hair protruded from the top of his belt. "This is Travis Lebeau," Clete said. "Tell Dave what"
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James Lee Burke |
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that indeed there is no greater theft than that of time.
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James Lee Burke |
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The great gift of age is the realization that each morning is a blessing, as votive in nature as a communion wafer raised to the sky. I made a habit of letting the world go on a daily basis, but unfortunately, it didn't want to let go of me.
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James Lee Burke |
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but ask yourself, have you ever known anyone whose marriage was saved by a marriage counselor, whose drinking was cured by a psychiatrist, whose son was kept out of reform school by a social worker? 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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Pretty damn boring to be a spectator in your own life.
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James Lee Burke |
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it can reach a murderous intensity within minutes over a betrayed trust, a lie, a wrong against a family member.
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James Lee Burke |
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I'm looking out at the desert and thinking of you. I don't know why.
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James Lee Burke |
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Don't live in tomorrow's problems.
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James Lee Burke |
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recidivists licensed bondsmen wouldn't pick up by the ears with Q-Tips,
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James Lee Burke |
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I'm not telling the troot, no?
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James Lee Burke |
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When a drunk gets eighty-sixed out of a bar, he's not supposed to buy drinks for the people still inside.
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James Lee Burke |
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caused him to drop his membership in the ACLU and join the National Rifle Association.
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James Lee Burke |
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We all got human weaknesses, noble mon. All I got to do is see her on TV and my Johnson starts barking.
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James Lee Burke |
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dreams are not a mystery. They simply represent our hopes and fears,
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James Lee Burke |
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degree of civility I normally possess," he said. "What'd she say?"
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James Lee Burke |
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I'm so strong I got muscles in my shit,
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James Lee Burke |
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No, I ain't wanted there, I don't like it there, I ain't coming in there . . . Good-bye.
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James Lee Burke |
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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.
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James Lee Burke |
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Maybe justice is finally catching up with this asshole.
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James Lee Burke |
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The collapse of the economy, the systemic spread of fear, the threat of imagined foreign adversaries would probably be enough to pull it off. But one way or another
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James Lee Burke |
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3708b74
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The sky was purple, streaked with fire, the palm trees like scorched tin cutouts against the sun. I woke at four in the morning and could not sleep again, my heart congealed with a sense of mortality that I could not explain.
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James Lee Burke |
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His round, pink face was smiling and happy, his green eyes lighted with an alcoholic shine.
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James Lee Burke |
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The rumors that he did business with the Giacanos were I'm sure true. To what degree was up for debate. In the state of Louisiana, systemic venality is a given. The state's culture, mind-set, religious attitudes, and economics are no different from those of a Caribbean nation. The person who believes he can rise to a position of wealth and power in the state of Louisiana and not do business with the devil probably knows nothing about the de..
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James Lee Burke |
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What Victor Charles and the NVA couldn't do to him, or the Mob or his enemies inside NOPD, Clete had done to himself with fried food, booze, weed, whites on the half shell, and calamitous affairs with strippers, junkies, and women who seemed to glow with both rut and neurosis.
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James Lee Burke |
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how many decisions did you make that at the time seemed inconsequential but down the track had enormous influence on either you or others?
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James Lee Burke |
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Joe Molinari's role in life had been being used by others, as consumer and laborer and voter and minion, which, in the economics of the world I grew up in, was considered normal by both the liege lord in the manor and the serf in the field.
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James Lee Burke |
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No matter how you cut it, I was back to the short form of the Serenity Prayer, known in AA and other recovery groups as Fuck It.
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James Lee Burke |
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But I was falling prey to that old self-serving notion that well-intended rhetoric can remove a stone bruise from the soul.
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James Lee Burke |
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I drove to the bar Theodosha had called from and parked on the street. The bar was a gray, dismal place, ensconced like a broken matchbox under a dying oak tree, its only indication of gaiety a neon beer sign that flickered in one window. She was at a table in back, the glow of the jukebox lighting her face and the deep blackness of her hair. She tipped a collins glass to her mouth, her eyes locked on mine. "Let me take you home," I said. "..
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James Lee Burke |
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felt foolish and wondered if I had entered that self-deluded stage in an aging man's life when others have to protect him from knowledge
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James Lee Burke |
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about himself.
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James Lee Burke |
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The band played "La Jolie Blon" a second time. For me, there is no more haunting ballad in the world. Its origins go back to the eighteenth century, but the rendition by Harry Choates is the one that never leaves you."
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James Lee Burke |
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Why don't you try to make me feel bad?
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James Lee Burke |
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a novel by Ron Hansen titled The Kid, the best story I ever read about the Lincoln County cattle wars.
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James Lee Burke |
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If anyone tells you he's from New Orleans and doesn't drink, he's probably not from New Orleans. Louisiana is not a state; it's an outdoor mental asylum in which millions of people stay bombed most of their lives. That's not an exaggeration. Cirrhosis is a family heirloom.
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James Lee Burke |
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thankful
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James Lee Burke |