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2085ce2
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The essence of samurai is not just service, but loyalty to his master, to a cause greater than himself.
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Barry Eisler |
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79897fc
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It's been my experience that people who can express their political views only in cliches and passionate generalizations are fanatics.
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Barry Eisler |
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fd8ffac
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Tatsu was true samurai, and would continue serving the same master no matter how many times that master ignored or even abused him. Devoted service was the highest end he knew. It
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Barry Eisler |
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584c9ce
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Sometimes, you have to remind yourself the perfect is the enemy of the good.
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Barry Eisler |
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51b2efc
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Had I not known that I was dead already I would have mourned my loss of life. --last words of Ota Dokan, scholar of military arts and poet, 1486
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Barry Eisler |
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761c930
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Men use these words to frighten us, Livia would tell them. To intimidate and paralyze. We need to habituate to what upsets us so we can fight through it. Deny our attackers the weapon of their words. And what was true for the verbal was true, too, for the physical.
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Barry Eisler |
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ce34aa4
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In the twenty-first century, people threw off data like dead skin cells.
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Barry Eisler |
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16cce24
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First was the fewer, not less. Now it was the care in avoiding a preposition at the end of a sentence. An educated man, presumably. Precise. Apparently fussy about small-minded rules, perhaps to compensate for a willingness to ignore large ones.
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Barry Eisler |
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3672012
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The insult was calculated. Whether this guy was an amateur or a professional, he would perceive himself as the latter, and would now be invested in proving it to me. Interrogators call the technique ego down.
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Barry Eisler |
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f12b449
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If you wanted to understand the mentality of most Washington insiders, all you had to do was put yourself in the mind of an insecure teenager, at which point it all began to make sense.
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Barry Eisler |
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fe2f0ff
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Well, the club is open until three in the morning and she works every day. So, by the time she gets home..." "I get the picture," I said. Though in fact, it was a little hard to imagine Harry with an attachment that didn't have an Ethernet cable and a mouse. He was an introverted, socially stunted guy, with no contacts I knew of outside of his day job, which he kept at arm's length in any event, and me. Conditions that had always made him u..
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Barry Eisler |
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4ba2f37
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I hadn't meant to embarrass him. "Harry, I only ask because, when you're young, you sometimes think you can have it both ways. If you're just having fun, you don't need to tell her anything. You shouldn't tell her anything. But if the attachment gets deeper, you'll need to do some hard thinking. About how close you want to get with her, about how important your hobbies are. Because you can't live with one foot in daylight and the other in s..
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Barry Eisler |
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dd19211
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War is a part of human nature, and we Japanese are human. But we have never fought, we have certainly never built weapons of mass destruction, to convince the world of the rightness of an idea. It took America and its bastard twin, communism, to do that." He"
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Barry Eisler |
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a3e793f
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we rarely see what we prefer to overlook.
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Barry Eisler |
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a1d1b4b
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Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light; I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
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Barry Eisler |
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13db68d
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Do all the people who know me know me better than I know myself?
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Barry Eisler |
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e6f54ca
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Checking your six?" he said, still smiling. "I thought you wanted an airport because they're safe. What is it about me that scares people so much?"
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Barry Eisler |
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1af56f6
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Medicine isn't supposed to taste good--that's what candy is for. Medicine is supposed to make you better.
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Barry Eisler |
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172290e
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the young man's blindness irreparable, his mistakes immutable, the consequences irreversible.
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Barry Eisler |
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c307365
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long-ago lifetime.
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Barry Eisler |
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ec6d070
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his pipe.
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Barry Eisler |
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8cf3c9e
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it came to feel more a fortress than a home. A fortress of solitude.
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Barry Eisler |
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af028c6
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What did Ian Fleming say? Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action. And I don't believe in waiting for even that much evidence. It was past time to act.
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Barry Eisler |
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1f4932a
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because how could something so awful also contain something so impossibly good?
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Barry Eisler |
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2f4da89
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Karate moved slowly through the lobby. His gaze went to Belghazi and his eyes hardened in a way that would mean nothing to most people but that meant a great deal to me. From this gaze I understood Karate wasn't looking at a man. No. What I saw instead was a hunter acquiring a target.
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Barry Eisler |
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a517472
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He shrugged. "You know I was in the dark about all that as much as you were. This time it's straightforward. And sanctioned." "Sanctioned by whom?" He looked at me. "By the proper authorities." "All right," I said, taking a sip from the porcelain demitasse. "Tell me." He leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. "After nine-eleven, Congress took the shackles off the Agency. There's a new spirit in the place. We're pushing the envelope..
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Barry Eisler |
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64b8a7a
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His eyes were still on me, but they no longer perceived. I stepped back, out of their sightless ambit, and paused to observe the scene. It looked like what it almost was: a weightlifting addict, alone and late at night, tries to handle more than he can, gets caught under the bar, suffocates and dies there. A bizarre accident.
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Barry Eisler |
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2fd32e0
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Within days, perhaps hours, the discarded remnants of this last job would have been bleached of any trace of their origins, each just another nameless, colorless item among nameless, colorless souls, the flotsam and jetsam of loneliness and despair that fall from time to time into Tokyo's collective blind spot, and from there into oblivion.
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Barry Eisler |
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4141967
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Tokyo is so vast, and can be so cruelly impersonal, that the succor provided by its occasional oasis is sweeter than that of any other place I've known. There is the quiet of shrines like Hikawa, inducing a somber sort of reflection that for me has always been the same pitch as the reverberation of a temple chime; the solace of tiny nomiya, neighborhood watering holes, with only two or perhaps four seats facing a bar less than half the leng..
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Barry Eisler |
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9b17f1c
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People put out signals--body language, gait, clothes, facial expression, posture, attitude, speech, mannerisms--that can tell you where they're from, what they do, who they are. Most importantly, do they fit in.
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Barry Eisler |
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2c4c3f0
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People put out signals--body language, gait, clothes, facial expression, posture, attitude, speech, mannerisms--that can tell you where they're from, what they do, who they are. Most importantly, do they fit in. Because if you don't fit in, the target will spot you, and after that you won't be able to get close enough to do it right. Or a cop will spot you, and you'll have some explaining to do. Or a countersurveillance team will spot you, ..
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Barry Eisler |
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34ad875
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I heard laughter and looked up. Some kids at the terminal next to me, playing an online game. I wondered for a moment how I had gotten here. And I wondered if maybe this is what Tatsu had meant when he said I could never retire. That I would inevitably ruin every other possibility.
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Barry Eisler |
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599497f
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We shall not cease from exploration, some poet wrote. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time. How incredibly fucking depressing.
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Barry Eisler |
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3079a50
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The Nigerians were gauntleting the entranceway. They bowed obsequiously low for Murakami and breathed "Irasshaimase" in unison. The one on the right spoke into his lapel mike. We walked down the steps. The ruddy-faced man I had seen there last time looked up. He saw Murakami and swallowed."
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Barry Eisler |
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e591505
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Why didn't you just come to my apartment?" He smiled. "Where you live is always where you are most vulnerable because it represents a possible choke point for an ambush. And I would not wish to surprise a man like you where he felt most vulnerable. Safer, I judged, to approach you on neutral ground, where you might even see me coming, ne?"
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Barry Eisler |
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3456bd1
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I wondered if she had bought the story. If she hadn't thanked Harry for his response, I would have known she hadn't bought it, because she was classy and it wouldn't have been like her not to respond. But the thank-you might have been automatic, sent even in the presence of continued suspicions. It could even have been duplicitous, intended to lull Harry into thinking she was satisfied when in fact the opposite was true.
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Barry Eisler |
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abb19e4
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I knew the persona I was inhabiting--moneyed Japanese gaming enthusiast--would lack crucial verisimilitude if the persona in question had never set eyes on Las Vegas.
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Barry Eisler |
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371cf4b
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I played baccarat at the upscale Bellagio; roulette at the off-strip Rio; craps at the fading Riviera, whose attempts to match the gayness and glitter around her felt forced, artificial, like makeup layered on by a woman who recognizes she was never beautiful to begin with and has now, in addition, grown colorless and old.
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Barry Eisler |
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7567673
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I walked the short distance to Nogizaka, then strolled up and down Gaienhigashi-dori. It took awhile, but I finally spotted it. There was no sign, only a small red rose on a black awning. The entrance was flanked by two black men, each of sufficient bulk to have been at home in the sumo pit. Their suits were well tailored and, given the size of the men wearing them, must have been custom-made. Nigerians, I assumed, whose size, managerial ac..
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Barry Eisler |
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934098d
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On the other stage, there was a girl who looked like a mix of Japanese and something Mediterranean or Latin. A good mix. She had that silky, almost shimmering black hair so many modern Japanese women like to ruin with chapatsu dye, worn short and swept over from the side. The shape of the eyes was also Japanese, and she was on the petite side. But her skin, a smooth gold like melted caramel, spoke of something else, something tropical. Her ..
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Barry Eisler |
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0024b0f
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But it seemed clever and careful was exactly what drew the attention of God's Eye.
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Barry Eisler |
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71a32d9
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Gradually our surroundings became more residential. We passed wide, open doorways. These I checked automatically, but they offered no danger, only miscellaneous domestic scenes: four elderly women absorbed in a game of mahjong; a group of boys surrounding a television; a family at the supper table. We passed an old shrine, its red paint peeling in the tropical moisture. Incense from the brazier within pervaded my senses with the recollected..
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Barry Eisler |
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cfc8bb5
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I was impressed. I had been taking care not to stand out or to otherwise become memorable, and he had spotted me anyway. He was well attuned to his environment, to the patterns that might at some point make the difference between winning and losing. Or living and dying.
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Barry Eisler |
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433d04c
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What makes humans special is our need to rationalize our actions.
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rationalization
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Barry Eisler |