The Neon Rain Quotes

“It's a great burden, being one of the good guys.”
― James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain

“The evening sky was streaked with purple, the color of torn plums, and a light rain had started to fall when I came to the end of the blacktop road that cut through twenty miles of thick, almost impenetrable scrub oak and pine and stopped at the front gate of Angola penitentiary.”
― James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain

“If we break promises to God, shouldn't we be allowed an occasional violation of our word to our friends and superiors?”
― James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain

“One day you'll have a quiet heart.”
― James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain

“Death was a rodent that ate its way inch by inch through your entrails, chewed at your liver and stomach, severed tendon from organ, until finally, when you were along in the dark, it sat gorged and sleek next to your head, its eyes resting, its wet muzzle like a kiss, a promise whispered in your ear.”
― James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain

“You pull on dat ’gator’s tail, he gonna clean your kneecaps, him.”
― James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain

“Gamblers and lovers pay big dues and enjoy limited consolations. But sometimes they are enough.”
― James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain

“You don’t have anything, you don’t know anything, you’re just a noise like a fart in somebody’s pants,” Segura said.”
― James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain

“Someone once told me that the gambler’s greatest desire, knowledge of the future, would drive us insane. On that warm summer evening as I drove back home, with the moon denting the lake and the fireflies lighting in the palm and oak trees, I felt a thin tremolo inside me, like the faint tinkling of crystal or the almost silent vibration of sympathetic guitar strings, just a hint of Cassandra’s tragic gift, and I tried to ascribe it to my old alcoholic fears that writhed in the unconscious as blind snakes would. But a winner at the track usually cares little for caution or moonlit nuances.”
― James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain

“Reason is a word I always associated with bureaucrats, paper shufflers, and people who formed committees that were never intended to solve anything.”
― James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain

“Someone once told me that the gambler’s greatest desire, knowledge of the future, would drive us insane.”
― James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain

“The road to Roncevaux lures the poet and the visionary like a drug, but the soldier pays for the real estate. I turned north and followed”
― James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain

“His face was empty. His eyes had the muddy, stupid glaze of someone who believed that the honest expression of his ignorance was an acceptable explanation to those who had the power to make judgments.”
― James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain

“IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE YOU believe me,” he said. “Do you think I boosted the ID and a government car, too?” He wouldn’t stop grinning. “No, I believe you. It’s just that you look like you might have escaped from The Howdy Doody Show.”
― James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain

“I reflected upon the ambiguous importance of the past in our lives. In order to free ourselves from it, I thought, we treat it as a decaying memory. At the same time, it’s the only measure of identity we have. There is no mystery to the self; we are what we do and where we have been. So we have to resurrect the past constantly, erect monuments to it, and keep it alive in order to remember who we are.”
― James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain

“Then about 3:00 a.m. I fell asleep and I dreamed. Shakespeare said that all power lies in the world of dreams, and I believe him. Somehow sleep allows us to see clearly those very things that are obscured by the light of day.”
― James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain

“Your knowledge and mine won’t go away. But you’ve got to look at it for what it is. You can’t bury something awful inside yourself, then pretend it’s not there while you fight another war that makes you break all your own rules.”
― James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain

“She smiled and then she was gone, and I drove home more depressed than I had been in years. Why? Because the truth was that I wanted to drink. And I don’t mean I wanted to ease back into it, either, with casual Manhattans sipped at a mahogany and brass-rail bar with red leather booths and rows of gleaming glasses stacked in front of a long wall mirror. I wanted busthead boilermakers of Jack Daniel’s and draft beer, vodka on the rocks, Beam straight up with water on the side, raw tequila that left you breathless and boiling in your own juices. And I wanted it all in a run-down Decatur or Magazine Street saloon where I didn’t have to hold myself accountable for anything and where my gargoyle image in the mirror would be simply another drunken curiosity like the neon-lit rain striking against the window. After four years of sobriety I once again wanted to fill my mind with spiders and crawling slugs and snakes that grew corpulent off the pieces of my life that I would slay daily. I blamed it on the killing of Julio Segura. I decided my temptation for alcohol and self-destruction was maybe even an indication that my humanity was still intact. I said the rosary that night and did not fall asleep until the sky went gray with the false dawn.”
― James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain

“It’s always today, Jim, and it’s just going to get better and better,” I said.”
― James Lee Burke, The Neon Rain