Quotes from Barry Eisler

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.

Guilt is what happens when there isn't a group to shame you. Regret, horror, atrocity—if the group doesn't care, we simply invent a God who does. A God who might be swayed by the subsequent good acts, or at least efforts, of an erstwhile wrongdoer.

I finished eating and motioned to the waiter that I was ready for the check. I looked around the restaurant one last time. The office party had broken up. The Americans remained, the white noise of their conversation warm and enthusiastic. The couple was still there, the young man's posture steadfastly earnest, the girl continuing to parry with quiet laughter.

You can't do that shit to your own kind. They have to be turned into the other first. Dehumanized.

She raised her arms away from her sides and looked at me. She smiled in that sly, subversive way she had—teasing, but also amused, and inviting the recipient of the smile to join in the amusement. "You're not going to search me?

She'd always assumed that what she kept buried down deep was imperceptible to the people around her. But she hadn't ever pressure checked the notion the way it might be pressure checked now.

Hell is empty And all the devils are here. —William Shakespeare, The Tempest

He moves like a cat, hears like a dog, and hides like a rabbit. And strikes like a damn rattlesnake.

We are studying sensible ways to amend our own constitution in India. And we often joke that perhaps you Americans could lend us yours, because you seem no longer to be using it yourselves.

Why would I want to do that?" I said, aware my heart had started a little giddyup just at the prospect. "We trust each other, right?" She lowered her arms, letting the smile linger for a moment, maybe acknowledging I'd handled her suggestion about as well as anyone could under the circumstances.

There they were, fanned out behind him like two points at the base of a moving scalene triangle.

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.

Sacrifice was the duty only of the few, who were of course hypocritically lauded by the many, the latter barely pausing in their infantile partying to wish the soldiers good luck at war. But

You're just like the politicians, Alex. You want something done but you won't let people do it right. You think you can pick up a turd from the clean end? It doesn't work that way.

I took off my shoes, as well, and followed her into the room. I'd left the lights on low so their reflection against the floor-to-ceiling window glass wouldn't obscure the view of the harbor and the lights of Hong Kong beyond it, but still she paused to log the room details before appreciating the panorama outside. I couldn't help smiling at that, although it wasn't unexpected. A civilian would never have paused before taking in that spectacular scenery.

She pulled into the parking lot in front of the senior-care facility where her father stayed and tried to shake off the feeling. She knew there were stories out there ten times worse than hers, a hundred times worse. But still, sometimes it all just seemed so hard. So . . . perilous.

Sure," I said, my tone neutral to the point of sarcasm.

A bodyguard. Sounded possible. The guy hadn't recognized me, I'd seen that. He was probably here just for protection and surveillance tag team. Or he could have been the triggerman. The Agency relies on contractor cutouts for its wetwork, people like me. He might have been one of them.

The reprieve was inevitably brief. I would return to the strip and all would be excess: Hummers purchased on tax breaks for use on flat asphalt, without even a pothole to challenge them; quarter-mile long buffets vacuumed down by impossibly corpulent diners; retirees addicted to endless hours of daily television and enticed to this place by a craving for more spectacle, more and ever more.

The smaller guys can be dangerous. Never having been able to rely on their size for intimidation, they have to learn to fight instead. I know because, before filling out in the army, I had been one of them.

Goddamn it, I thought, at the mention of her name. I just couldn't get clear of these people. They were like cancer. You think you've cut it out, it always comes back.

For some, the distance between who you were and who you have become is unbridgeable, and the dissonance attempted repatriation creates is a constant reminder of the very changes you want so badly to forget. When

peccadilloes.

I know. I get it. Because when I knew but they didn't know I knew, that was good. But when they knew that I knew but I didn't know they knew, that was bad. But now that I know they know that I know, and they don't know it, it's good again.