Flags on the Bayou Quotes

“They are the kind of cowards who use one another to become somebody else, someone who can do things they would not do on their own.”
― James Lee Burke, Flags on the Bayou

“Oh, good heavens, what is that old man doing now? Does not the world have enough trouble already without the presence of Colonel Carleton Hayes? Why did Our Lord put such a creature in our midst, unless it was to show us there are worse things than Original Sin.”
― James Lee Burke, Flags on the Bayou

“I have no expression in my face or eyes. I can already tell what Endicott plans for me. It will be hard and long, and when he finishes there will nothing left of me except rags and pieces of things nobody will recognize. “I surrender, Captain John,” I say. “You ain’t got to hurt nobody. I’m gonna do whatever you want. Suh, please don’t hurt Pierre’s horse.” I’m looking up into his face now. Then I say what may be the last prayer I ever send Upstairs: It’s Friday and t’ree o’clock, Lord. I know no matter what I do, You ain’t gonna put me in hell. Like Hannah says, we’re already inside the kingdom. I just want to protect my man and that li’l boy yonder in the arms of a crazy woman. Thank you, Suh, for helping me do what I need to do. It might get kind of rough. Amen.”
― James Lee Burke, Flags on the Bayou

“I think about the warm light that encapsulated me at age fourteen beneath the Merrimack River, and the lost children everywhere in the world, and the iconic thorns that seem unfairly imposed on the human heart, and the baptism that can come like a rainstorm of light outside a textile mill, and I know that somehow we rise above the woe and the sound and the fury and the mire of human veins that drag us back again and again into the maelstrom, bathed by a luminosity so intense that we can stand on a scaffold with John Brown at our side, unafraid, Golgotha nothing more than a vapor on the horizon.”
― James Lee Burke, Flags on the Bayou

“My closest companion was the laudanum on my night table, and I no longer cared whether I became an opium addict or not. In fact, the “pink lady,” as we used to call it, was a lovely friend to have at my beck and call.”
― James Lee Burke, Flags on the Bayou

“This is a very strange war we are having. Yankees and Rebs come and go. White trash like the Red Legs attack and terrorize and rob both sides and see if they can outdo William Sherman in scorched-earth diplomacy. Most of them breathe through their mouths and think the words “Dred Scott” are a warning to stay away from Scottish people.”
― James Lee Burke, Flags on the Bayou

“Gargoyles are gargoyles. They are not symbolic. If you invite them into your life, they do not go home easily.”
― James Lee Burke, Flags on the Bayou

“have yet to meet a madman who was not acutely aware of his own needs, his own visceral pleasures, his own indemnification. When it comes to pride, a madman has the sensitivity of an infected gland.”
― James Lee Burke, Flags on the Bayou

“I suspect his brain is filled with wormholes, and he slides from one to another with great facility because chaos is the only reality he knows. That’s about as kind as I can get.”
― James Lee Burke, Flags on the Bayou

“By the same token, the overseers are usually the descendants of Cockneys who were born not far from Bow bells. The profanity and coarseness and violent metaphors of a truly pagan race are of course the gifts of the Irish, God bless their souls. But perhaps the greatest contribution is from the people who were brought to the New World on slave ships during the era of the Middle Passage. It’s the iambic line. Listen to it sometime. Every other syllable is accented. Any British poet would immediately recognize it.”
― James Lee Burke, Flags on the Bayou

“The elevated and wispy echoes of our mother country that you hear in plantation society have been taught us by British tutors. Listen to their round vowels. You could roll them down a hallway at Buckingham Palace. By the same token, the overseers”
― James Lee Burke, Flags on the Bayou

“With time, atrocities will happen, and one side will provoke the other, and each will take revenge in turn, and we will go home with secrets we share with no one. That’s the reality of war, not the quixotic babbling of poets. A”
― James Lee Burke, Flags on the Bayou

“The dark energies within the society I serve are unpredictable and can be so cruel you question the existence of God. I hope I haven’t opened a door I can’t close.”
― James Lee Burke, Flags on the Bayou

“There is no equal to poor white trash when they get their hands on a Bible. I’m surprised we don’t have people practicing infanticide on street corners.”
― James Lee Burke, Flags on the Bayou

“anxious to ingest a chunk of lead to go along”
― James Lee Burke, Flags on the Bayou

“There is no equal to poor white trash when they get their hands on a Bible.”
― James Lee Burke, Flags on the Bayou

“It is the kind of sobbing you only hear from a woman, because it comes from pain that men do not have to bear; it’s the pain of labor; it’s the pain of rejection and betrayal; it is a form of rage so great there is no receptacle big enough in which to confine it. And worst of all, it cannot be described or understood by those who have not experienced it themselves.”
― James Lee Burke, Flags on the Bayou