John Burdett Quotations

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

'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.'

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.

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?

I'm fascinated by Buddhism. I adore Buddhism, and I read about it all the time, but I haven't formally become a Buddhist, although I don't really know why I haven't. I guess I feel I don't need to.

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?

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

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

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

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.

When you notice light seeping into your coffin, it's hard to go on pretending that you're still dead.

Shun security, I advise aspiring novelists when they complain to me that they are stuck. Get disoriented. Maybe your agonizing writing block isnt agonizing enough. Your enemy is comfort.

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.

The great weakness of the West is that it has nothing with which to inspire loyalty except wealth. But what is wealth? Another washing machine, a bigger car, a nicer house to live in? Not much to feed the spirit in all that.

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.

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.

I think it is immensely difficult to get the U.S. interested in non-U.S. topics. I dont 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?

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

To a Buddhist, contradictions only exist in a mind that has been forced to cultivate them.

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

Las Vegas is the expression, in glitter and concrete, of Americas brittle and mutating id.

There are plenty of brilliant people who are too stressed out to read challenging literary novels.

Your fear of letting go prevents you from letting go of your fear of letting go.

I am moonlighting for the Buddha.

Don't ask me when I first mastered the obvious.

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