James Lee Burke Quotes

They don't like the thought of someone else making demands on the person whom they see as belonging entirely to them.

She looked at him, watched hum toss the remote on the table and say," So maybe I'm going to handcuff myself to you the next time you decide to take a stroll.

Ted needs someone to be there 100% of the time. He thinks that's love. It's not love - it's babysitting.

I admit that I am very possessive.

...he had a way of taking your hand which made it clear he'd have to be the one to let go." From Alice Hoffman's "Local Girls", pg.102.

I'm trying my hardest to get you so wrapped up in me you never leave.

He never lets go of Annie's hand. Not when they walk, not when they eat. I doubt he ever plans to.

The ring always believes that the finger lives for it.

Isn't it possible, he wondered, for one person to love another without trying to own each other? Or is that buried so deep in our genes that we can never get it out? Territoriality. My wife. My friend. My lover. My outrageous and annoying computer personality who's about to be shut off at the behest of a half-crazy girl with OCD on a planet that I never heard of and how will I live without [her] when she's gone?

The tighter you squeeze, the less you have.

Everything else has vanished, so you take them now. Maybe if you're the one keeping them, I'll be the one feeling better.

Save me, save me, save me from this squeeze. I got a big fat mama trying to break me.

The moment love becomes a relationship, it becomes a bondage, because there are expectations and there are demands and there are frustrations, and an effort from both sides to dominate. It becomes a struggle for power.

When you take a woman away from her man, what you get is a woman who can be taken away from her man.

It's strange, isn't it, how the idea of belonging to someone can sound so great? It can be comforting, the way it makes things decided. We like the thought of being held, until it's too tight. We like that certainty, until it means there's no way out. And we like being his, until we realize we're not ours anymore.

Don't tell me what to do, don't tell me what to say. And please, when I go out with you, don't put me on display.

Please don't worry. I will always come for you. I won't let you go until you understand that." "Then I refuse to understand," she said.

Men love you more if they can be made a little uncertain about owning you.

It's so easy to find someone who would walk around me like a shadow and do everything for me and never be tempted by other men, so obviously I'm not attracted by that type.

Here is the most telling fact: you wish to possess me.
 Here is another fact: I loved you and let you think you could.

It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love ... You can't own a human being.

That's the trouble with caring about anybody, you begin to feel overprotective. Then you begin to feel crowded.

You don’t share me. You own me.

Do me wrong, do me right, tell me lies, but hold me tight.

What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.