James Lee Burke Quotes

One of the things you don't have in Haiti is you don't have anybody on crack doing something completely out of - that's unpredictable. Even at the worst times in Haiti, the violence that had happened, the lack of security that happened, was largely predictable because it was politically tied.

Oh yeah In France a skinny man Died of a big disease with a little name By chance his girlfriend came across a needle And soon she did the same At home there are seventeen-year-old boys And their idea of fun Is being in a gang called The Disciples High on crack, totin' a machine gun.

Every other day there's something - I'm dealing drugs, I'm starving people. I have never done a drug in my life.

I drink to forget I drink.

I've been drinking and using since I was 13.

They used to say it was bad for Indians to drink, but it's bad for anybody. When they drink they lose their cool, a lot of us. Like when we played with Sonny Boy, I would never get paid, you know. He would drink up all the money.

But when alcohol comes in, start running. Because there's a demon there, and it goes back to her childhood.

Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.

I know I'm drinking myself to a slow death, but then I'm in no hurry.

Drinking intensifies all your pressures and your needs.

One day I woke up with an atrocious hangover, and it hurt so badly that I told myself, 'It's time to stop. I can't do it anymore. It's not good. It hurts too much.'

A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.

I see that a man cannot give himself up to drinking without being miserable one half his days and mad the other.

I drank a lot when I was a teenager and I don't drink any more, because that's when I thought, you know, I'm gonna end up a car wreck.

No addiction is good.

The drug dealers, they sympathize with me. They see me as some sort of pathetic character.

Whiskey is all right in its place - but its place is hell.

There were a lot of drugs. We kinda just passed the time that way. For a couple of years we were all doin' anything we could get our hands on.

And we used to do a lot of drugs and get very drunk on very cheap wine.

I knew how it was with drunks. They ran out of generosity, even for themselves.

I wasn't even 20 at the time, but it taught me something about drugs. They can take a good man, a warm, funny, loving family man, and turn him into a loser and worse.

You have problems, you think drink helps, then you have two problems.

If I had all the money I'd spent on drink, I'd spend it on drink.

It was around the summer of 1982 when the drug problem really impacted. It became a lifestyle rather than a recreation. When you start lying and stealing, you cannot con yourself you're in control any more.

First the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes the man.