House of the Rising Sun Quotes

“People were not what they said. They were not what they thought. They were not what they promised. People were what they did. When the final tally was done, nothing else mattered.”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“Hope was the light that allowed man to prevail in the worst of circumstances. But it also could become the narcotic of the self-deluded and the naive.”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“Every drunkard has many moments of shame that live like carpet tacks in his memory,”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“Thinking at night isn’t good for anybody.”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“occupied. Jefferson, a child of the Enlightenment who believed the unexamined life was not worth living, looked upon melancholia and self-destructive thoughts as the inevitable products of a brilliant and curious mind when it became idle. While a dolt remained as happy as a cloth doll with a smile painted on its face—even when the dolt was about to fall off a precipice—an intelligent person suffered the pains of the damned simply because he paused long enough to hear his own thoughts.”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“But the greatest cheat, the one a person never got over, was betrayal by a friend and the subsequent loss of faith in one’s fellow man.”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“scum like Butch Cassidy’s gang, a collection of throwbacks who convinced themselves they robbed trains and murdered people because they represented the oppressed.”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“Jefferson, a child of the Enlightenment who believed the unexamined life was not worth living, looked upon melancholia and self-destructive thoughts as the inevitable products of a brilliant and curious mind when it became idle. While a dolt remained as happy as a cloth doll with a smile painted on its face—even when the dolt was about to fall off a precipice—an intelligent person suffered the pains of the damned simply because he paused long enough to hear his own thoughts.”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“I wouldn’t wish my father on my worst enemy. If he gets sent to hell, I think the devil will quit his job.”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“Had the villagers not heard of the gringo called Patton, the American officer who tied bodies on the fenders of his motorcar?”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“How did a man know when it was his time? The answer was simple. There comes a moment when you no longer resist the inevitable and you accept the fact that billions have preceded you and that your death is not more important than theirs.”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“THE SUN HAD just crested on the horizon like a misplaced planet, swollen and molten and red, lighting a landscape that seemed sculpted out of clay and soft stone and marked by the fossilized tracks of animals with no names, when a tall barefoot man wearing little more than rags dropped his horse’s reins and eased himself off the horse’s back and worked his way down an embankment into a riverbed chained with pools of water that glimmered as brightly as blood in the sunrise.”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“The gift of Morpheus brought not only sleep but oblivion.”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“scullions”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“gandy dancers”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“solipsistic”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“dipsomania,”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“perdition,”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“jakes,”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“meretricious”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“busthead”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“ken”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“She wondered if this were what hell was about. Not a place of punishment but of disparity. Those who had done nothing to earn their fate lived like this, while three miles away, others rode the Ferris wheel and children raised their hands joyfully to a hot-air balloon that rained down candy on their heads.”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“Then an event happened that caused him to wonder at the great folly that seemed to govern his life, namely, his attempts to plan and control his future. Most of the events that changed his life had taken place without his consent and at the time had seemed of little consequence. Our destiny didn’t lie in the stars, he told himself, or even in our mettle. It lay in our ability to recognize a gift when it was placed in your hands.”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“Maggie’s face darkened, as”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun

“WHEN ISHMAEL WOKE, the walls of his trench were seeping water and the dawn was colder than it should have been, the sky an unnatural and ubiquitous pale color that had less to do with the rising of the sun than the passing of the night.”
― James Lee Burke, House of the Rising Sun