James Lee Burke Writing Quotations

You do it a day at a time. You just put your rejection slips in a shoebox and tell yourself one day you're going to autograph them and sell them at auction.

You have two choices in life. You either die or do something with your time. You're going to be doing something - why not write?

writing is like being in love. You never get better at it or learn more about it. The day you think you do is the day you lose it. Robert Frost called his work a lover's quarrel with the world. It's ongoing. It has neither a beginning nor an end. You don't have to worry about learning things. The fire of one's art burns all the impurities from the vessel that contains it.

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.

If you don't compromise your gift, if you write each day as well as you can, and then submit your work and not worry about it and go on to the next piece, you suddenly find oddly enough that you're no more interested in the applause than the silence. You don't hear either one of them. You can never listen to the naysayers. If you do you won't survive.

I wouldn't write anything autobiographical. If you've lived a life like Laurence of Arabia, it might be a consideration, but otherwise it's a little bit vain, it seems to me.

You do it a day at a time. You write as well as you can, you put it in the mail, you leave it under submission, you never leave it at home.