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IN MY OPINION, one of the great follies in the world is to put yourself inside the head of dysfunctional people. The mistake we usually make is to assume there is a rationale for their behavior. In most cases, there is none.
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James Lee Burke |
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Those are props from a film we made about a serial killer." He gave me the title and named the actors and the directors. My head was throbbing. I couldn't process"
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James Lee Burke |
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The advantage of having a little knowledge about the classical world is that few other people do. The second advantage is your awareness that every problem facing us today has already occurred many times previously, and the behavior of the players is always predictable and the consequences are always the same.
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James Lee Burke |
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How many major decisions did you actually make?
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James Lee Burke |
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go with the wind, all of us twirling among young people who wore flowers in their hair, a church bell clanging without stop in a Spanish mission. Roll on forever, Woody.
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James Lee Burke |
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I also smell it on you.
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James Lee Burke |
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We had little money but didn't think of ourselves as poor. Our vision, if I can call it that, was not materialistic. If we had a concept about ourselves, it was egalitarian, although we would not have known what that word meant. We spoke French entirely. There was a bond between Cajuns and people of color. Cajuns didn't travel, because they believed they lived in the best place on earth. But somehow the worst in us, or outside of us, assert..
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James Lee Burke |
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from which I had graduated in 1960 with a teacher's certificate and a degree in English.
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James Lee Burke |
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eyes like light trapped in sherry,
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James Lee Burke |
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We're going to call him Mr. Adorable. No, we're going to call him Snuggs,
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James Lee Burke |
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Bienvenu, mon raton laveur et votre tee amis, aussi.
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James Lee Burke |
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I've got a worse scenario, one I can't get out of my head sometimes," Clete said. "I wake up with it in the middle of the night. Some mornings, too. That's when it really gets bad." "What does?" "The dream. I dream we're all dead. We fucked up while we were alive and now we're stacking time in a place where there're no answers, only questions that drive you crazy. I went to a shrink about it." "What did he say?" "Nothing. I didn't give him ..
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James Lee Burke |
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The party is a grand one and infinite in nature and like the music of the spheres thunderous in its presence, and I realized finally that the invitation to it comes with the sunrise and a clear eye and a good heart and the knowledge that we're already inside eternity and need not fear any longer.
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James Lee Burke |
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God, don't let me be an old fool, I prayed.
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James Lee Burke |
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Two kinds of cops eat their gun: the corrupt ones and the ones who let the dead lay claim upon the quick.
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James Lee Burke |
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In a half hour I could kick open a furnace door and fling into the flames all the snakes and squeaking bats that lived inside me. Except the next morning they would writhe with new life in the ashes and come back home, stinking and hungry.
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James Lee Burke |
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Maybe he would come back one day. Or maybe not. Back then, people had a way of walking down a tar road and crossing through a pool of heat and disappearing forever.
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James Lee Burke |
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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 |