John Burdett Quotes

Las Vegas is the expression, in glitter and concrete, of America's brittle and mutating id. ~ John Burdett

In Southeast Asia the world is understood to be a vast, complex network of interdependent relationships. So when global capitalism makes it impossible for small-time rice farmers to feed their families and make a living, it is a natural thing for anyone in the family who can find an alternative source of income to do so. ~ John Burdett

I don't want enlightenment, I want him. Sorry Buddha, I loved him more than you. ~ John Burdett

The world other than as advertised can be an amazing place. ~ John Burdett

Policing. You think you've got it tough. You don't have any idea how it was when I joined the force. The whole cake was divided down to the last crumb. The big boss got seventy percent, and the portions got smaller as you descended the totem pole. And no complaining. You learned to keep your mouth shut at all times - you wouldn't have survived the first week.
You see, what nobody tells you about capitalism is that its warlordism in disguise. That leaves the only job in the jungle worth having an apex feeder - the rest is slavery at various levels of discomfort. Socially, psychologically, we're still in the rain forest. - Colonel Vikorn ~ John Burdett

We do not look on death the way you do, farang. My closest colleagues grasp my arm and one or two embrace me. No one says sorry. Would you be sorry for a sunset? ~ John Burdett

Lumpini Park at night: love at its cheapest, but the incidence of HIV is said to be over 60 per cent. In the darkness: furtive movement on benches and on the grass, muted moans and whispers, rustlings of large animals in heat, the intensity of the atomic fusion of sec and death (highly addictive, they say). ~ John Burdett

I think it is immensely difficult to get the U.S. interested in non-U.S. topics. I don't think this is because the average American reader is disinterested, but more because of publishers playing it safe: if a thriller based in L.A. is a sure winner, why spend money plugging one based in Paris - or Bangkok? ~ John Burdett

I discovered that Thailand was one of those countries, like Sri Lanka and India, where memory of past lives used to be commonplace. Go back a few generations, and you find people talking about earlier lives with total certainty. ~ John Burdett

It is quite amazing how hard the subconscious works when it is made to understand that this life is not a rehearsal, there is no safety net and no assurance of any final closure. It is also quite appalling to realize how catatonic the imagination can become when we hedge our bets, opt for the safer direction at every fork in the path. ~ John Burdett

Sincerity is the first casualty of capitalism. We ~ John Burdett

The function of the West is to turn bodies and minds into products. It cannot understand that the rest of the world holds this to be an obscenity, a corruption of our nirvanic nature. ~ John Burdett

Just studying Buddhism, then meditating and going to Buddhist monasteries, talking to Buddhist monks, combined with the Thai people themselves, changed the way I look at the world. ~ John Burdett

You don't understand. I only prostitute the part of the body that isn't important, and nobody suffers except my karma a little bit. I don't do big harm. You prostitute your mind. Mind is seat of Buddha. What you do is very very bad. You should not use your mind in that way ~ John Burdett

Expecting to be wrong about most things most of the time brings, finally, the kind of humility that leads to peace. I think. ~ John Burdett

In the West, we've lost our intuitive understanding of how poverty shapes thinking. ~ John Burdett

The sound she is making is the sound hearts make after they're in
pieces and the fragments dissolve into the overwhelming sadness of the
universe. The power to hear it may be the only privilege of the
thoroughly dispossessed. ~ John Burdett

Your fear of letting go prevents you from letting go of your fear of letting go. ~ John Burdett

'Shun security,' I advise aspiring novelists when they complain to me that they are stuck. 'Get disoriented. Maybe your agonizing writing block isn't agonizing enough. Your enemy is comfort.' ~ John Burdett

If the world is telling you you're successful, but you don't feel it, you might as well have failed. ~ John Burdett

Bangkok is one of the world's great cities, all of which own red-light districts that find their ways into the pages of novels from time to time. The sex industry in Thailand is smaller per capita because the Thais are less coy about it than many other people. Most visitors to the kingdom enjoy wonderful vacations without coming across any evidence of sleaze at all ~ John Burdett

In essence, the Thai people are not materialistic at all. They're not in the least driven by the kind of ambition that drives us. The more I got to know them, and the more time I spent with them, the more I understood that this was a totally legitimate attitude to life, and why not? ~ John Burdett

He woos, he confronts, he delivers, he heals, he shoots straight, and then he uses intrigue. He lives out before them the most compelling view of God, shows them an incredibly attractive holiness while shattering the religious glaze. But still, he lets them walk away if they choose. ~ John Eldredge

One in seven Americans lives without health insurance, and that's a truly staggering figure. ~ John M. McHugh

See that your children be taught, not only the labors of the earth, but the loveliness of it. ~ John Ruskin

The trivial round, the common task,Would furnish all we ought to ask. ~ John Keble

I have thought I am creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through the air. I am a spirit come from God and returning to God; just hovering over the great gulf, till a few moments hence I am no more seen. I drop into an unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thing, the way to heaven
how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way: for this very end he came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price give me the Book of God! I have it. Here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri [a man of one book]. ~ John Wesley

Everyone suspected that the rigors of a good school would have the desired, dulling effect on Noah and Simon - Gravesend Academy would assault them with a host of new demands, of impossible standards. The sheer volume (if not the value) of the homework would tire them out, and everyone knew that tired boys were safer boys; the numbing routine, the strict attentions paid to the dress code, the regulations regarding only the most occasional and highly chaperoned encounters with the female sex ... all this would certainly civilize them. Why ~ John Irving

She is a reflection of comfortable middle-class values that do not take seriously the continuing unemployment. What I particularly regret is that she does not take seriously the intellectual decline. Having given up the Empire and the mass production of industrial goods, Britain's future lay in its scientific and artistic pre-eminence. Mrs Thatcher will be long remembered for the damage she has done. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Journaling is a way to be a good steward of the Spirit's illuminations. ~ John Piper

I was all ear,
And took in strains that might create a soul
Under the ribs of Death. ~ John Milton

Ah, but the Moon my Love is jealous, and can you blame him? You outshine him with your virtues ... ~ John Geddes

No, it is you who are mistaken," he said. "Look at you. You are neither man nor beast, but some pathetic creature who is less than both. You hate what you are and want to be what you cannot truly become. Your appearance may change, and you may wear all the fine clothes that you can steal from the bodies of your victims, but you will still be a wolf inside. Even then, what do you think will happen once your outer transformation is complete, when you start to resemble fully what once you hunted? You will look like a man, and the pack will no longer recognize you as its own. What you most desire is the very thing that will doom you, for they will tear you apart and you will die in their jaws as others have died in yours. ~ John Connolly

And no one rose to ask the question: Good?-by what standard?
John Galt ~ Ayn Rand

Some folks they take to living fast while some prefer a slow death. ~ John Hiatt

Beauty beyond thought everywhere, beneath, above, made and being made forever. ~ John Muir

It isn't the size of the window that determines how much you see. It's which way the window is facing, and how close you are, and whether the glass is clear. ~ John Piper

What is being black? It's making the most of your life, not taking a single moment for granted. Taking something that's seen as a struggle and making it work for you, or you'll die inside. Not to say that my struggle is like the collective struggle of black America. But maybe my struggle is similar to one black dude's. ~ John Mayer

Today, almost half a century after the publication of the Encyclical [of Pius IX], new knowledge has led to the recognition in the theory of evolution of more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory. ~ Pope John Paul II

I'm a good scholar when it comes to reading but a blotting kind of writer when you give me a pen. ~ John Millington Synge

Men go to musicals. Women are the ones who buy the tickets for plays. ~ John O'Hara

Others were simply possessed by a feeling that they had made a catastrophic mistake. They had made an irreversible error in coming to England, and their lives would never recover - their lives would never again be their lives, but the story of this huge mistake that they had made. ~ John Lanchester

The arts and sciences, in general, during the three or four last centuries, have had a regular course of progressive improvement. The inventions in mechanic arts, the discoveries in natural philosophy, navigation and commerce, and the advancement of civilization and humanity, have occasioned changes in the condition of the world and the human character which would have astonished the most refined nations of antiquity. A continuation of similar exertions is everyday rendering Europe more and more like one community, or single family. ~ John Adams

The idea behind stamped money is sound. ~ John Maynard Keynes

I am a mathematician, sir. I never permit myself to think. ~ John Dickson Carr

My grief sought out all parts of my body it hadn't yet inhabited, and I felt like I might collapse in on myself right there, at last, spectacularly ~ John Darnielle

By operating independently of government aid, the churches ... avoid the resentment of those who do not want to be forced to contribute to churches to which they do not belong and of their own members who do not welcome being forced to contribute through government taxation. ~ John M Swomley

When the Emperor and his notorious apprentice, Darth Vader, find themselves stranded in the middle of insurgent action on an inhospitable planet, they must rely solely on each other, the Force, and their awesome martial skills to prevail. ~ John Jackson Miller

He nodded. "From the first moment I saw you, I wanted you. It was the night of the Nethercourt gathering three years ago. You wore a green gown and your eyes seemed to be alive with color. You entered the room and I had to have you… I would have had you, except that Owen told me you were his new mistress."

Mariah blinked in increasing disbelief at the detail John could recount of the night of their first meeting. "I - I had no idea of your feelings."

"Of course not." John frowned. "I made certain you did not, nor did Owen. I would not have betrayed him in such a manner. But my desire for you never decreased. Although I suppose that fact is rather clear since I have taken you not once, but twice in recent days. And without much finesse either time, for which I apologize."

Mariah set her cup away and leaned back in the chair to stare at him. "You act as though I received no pleasure from those encounters. I assure you, I did. A great deal, both times."

He smiled, almost in relief. "Good. I would hate to think I have left a poor impression. ~ Jess Michaels

When the late Bishop was appointed, about thirty-two years ago, to diffuse the light of the Gospel through this extensive portion of His Majesty's dominions, it was even a greater spiritual, than a natural wilderness. ~ John Strachan

But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States ... I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers who worked tirelessly - men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country. ~ Michele Bachmann

I think that it's when we step out of the road, step outside the box, become our own person, and we walk fearlessly down paths other people wouldn't look at, that true progress comes. And sometimes true beauty as well. ~ John McAfee

Not to be daily employing the Spirit and new nature for the mortifying of sin is to neglect that excellent succor which God has given us against our greatest enemy. If we neglect to make use of what we have received, God may justly hold his hand from giving us more. His graces, as well as his gifts, are bestowed on us to use, exercise, and trade with. Not to be daily mortifying sin is to sin against the goodness, kindness, wisdom, grace, and love of God, who has furnished us with a principle of doing it. ~ John Owen

It had been no more than three minutes since she had awakened, laughing quietly, from her dream. Now the quiet laughter was over, and Polly MacIver was dead. ~ John Saul, Second Child

I wouldn't attach too much importance to these student riots. I remember when I was a student at the Sorbonne in Paris, I used to go out and riot occasionally. ~ John Foster Dulles

all of us lost souls allow ourselves to live in worry and anger and self-importance and pettiness when life with God is all around us: ~ John Ortberg

14For the earth will be afilled With the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, As the waters cover the sea. ~ John F. MacArthur Jr.

The Thames is liquid history. ~ John Burns

What I'd have liked would have been the money and the hit records without the fame. ~ John Lennon

The rich, the well-born, and the able, acquire an influence among the people that will soon be too much for simple honesty and plain sense, in a house of representatives. The most illustrious of them must, therefore, be separated from the mass, and placed by themselves in a senate; this is, to all honest and useful intents, an ostracism. ~ John Adams

The zest of life lies in right doing, not in the garnered harvest. ~ John Lancaster Spalding

Man becomes virtually an automaton in the loss of his individuality and responsibility. He is the harp of a thousand strings played upon by a divine hand, but not a man! ~ John Grier Hibben

The principal difference between an adventurer and a suicide is that the adventurer leaves himself a margin of escape (the narrower the margin, the greater the adventure). ~ John Irving

We are inclined to think that if we watch a football game or a baseball game, we have taken part in it. ~ John F. Kennedy

They say great themes make great novels.. but what these young writers don't understand is that there is no greater theme than men and women. ~ John O'Hara

I would be annoyed if I were any more in tune with modern sensibilities. I was shaped differently. The world in which I grew up was Texan and Southern, and it had many, many failings. I think I've gotten rid of most of the bad things in myself from that earlier age, but I don't adjust to the way things are progressing now. ~ John Graves

I never shot nobody I didnt have to. ~ John Wayne

I'm a jet jockey and I've always escaped ever since I was a kid. I've always been a weekend type runaway person. Work hard, play hard type thing. It's not been a mid-life thing at all, it's been a habit because I think it changes your environment and how you feel even if it's for the day. It's a good thing. ~ John Travolta