Quotes from Barry Eisler

A monk awoke from a dream that he was a butterfly, then wondered whether he was a butterfly dreaming he was a man.

It took me a long time to learn that proving people wrong is purposeless, fighting stupidity is futile, and formal recognition prevents people from underestimating you—and thereby from ceding to you surprise and other tactical advantages.

no matter the pain or shock or confusion, never stop moving. Never give them a stationary target.

If I have to err, it's on the side of assuming the worst. This way, if I'm wrong, I can always apologize. Or send flowers. You err on the other side, the flowers will be coming to you.

In the twenty-first century, people threw off data like dead skin cells.

Something about all that power seemed to make the assholes who wielded it believe they were invulnerable.

But it's like swimming underwater, you know? At first you feel as though you could go along forever, seeing everything from this new perspective, but eventually you have to come up for air.

You forget the things you want to remember and remember the things you want to forget.

after our split, I wanted to believe that whatever had been between us was unique, that it could never happen again. Because if it was exceptional, it must be an exception, maybe even the exception that proved the rule. And the rule was that I would always be alone, and could never trust anyone.

I have no patience for anyone who enjoys meat but moans about slaughterhouses, who wears cheap clothes but deplores sweatshops, who weeps about climate change from behind the wheel of an SUV or from the window seat of an airplane.

E acabei por ir a casa dela para lhe configurar o sistema todo. — Harry, «configuraste-lhe o sistema todo»? — perguntei, arregalando os olhos e fingindo-me pasmado. Baixou o olhar, mas não conseguiu esconder um sorriso. — Tu percebeste. — Não vais... penetrar as seguranças dela, pois não? — perguntei, incapaz de resistir.

I looked out at the street beyond the overhang. The rain was coming in at gray angled streaks. One of my hands moved to her cheek. I closed my eyes. Her skin was wet from the rain and I thought of tears.

Now death was a place, a place to which people disappeared forever when they died, a place that gradually sucked away the clarity of memory afterward for a similar one-way journey.

What makes humans special is our need to rationalize our actions.

A heart beset by coronary disease will begin to recruit secondary arteries to carry oxygenated blood.

Overall, one of the things that excites me most about self-publishing is that the highest-value use of my time in promoting the books will be found in writing more of them.

The most important guideline when it comes to argument is the golden rule. If someone were addressing your point, what tone, what overall approach would you find persuasive and want her to use? Whatever that is, do it yourself.

And I resented you for that," she went on, "because I've always believed hate is such an unworthy emotion. So weak and ultimately pointless." I marveled briefly at how innocent a life someone would have to have led for such a philosophy to emerge credible and intact, and for a second I loved her for it.

Knowledge has always flowed upwards, to bishops and kings, not down to serfs and slaves. The principle remains the same in the present era . . . governments dare to aspire, through their intelligence agencies, to a god-like knowledge of every one of us. —Julian Assange

The essence of samurai is not just service, but loyalty to his master, to a cause greater than himself.

It's been my experience that people who can express their political views only in clichés and passionate generalizations are fanatics.

Foreigners who think of Japan as a polite society have never ridden the Yamanote at rush hour. The

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

In my unfortunately infrequent encounters with real passion, I'm rarely as careful as I ought to be. The rationalization goes something like: With all the bullets and mortar rounds I've survived, I must be immune to sexually transmitted diseases. Stupid, I know. More likely, fate will indulge its taste for irony by killing me with AIDS os some other unpleasant alternative.