Quotes from James Clavell

Wildcat strikes are the way of the future. With wildcats we can get around union hierarchies without disrupting existing unionism. Our unions're fragmented. Deliberately. Fifty men can be a separate union and that union can dominate thousands—and so long as there's never a secret ballot, the few will always rule the many!

No honor. No cojones. Except to burn innocents in the name of God.

Changi changed everyone, changed values permanently. For instance, it gave you a dullness about death—we saw too much of it to have the same sort of meaning to outsiders, to normal people. We're a generation of dinosaurs, we the few who survived. I suppose anyone who goes to war, any war, sees life with different eyes if they end up in one piece.

A lot of bull that's worshipped as the be-all and end-all of existence. So much of 'normal, civilized' life is bull that you can't imagine it. For us ex-Changi-ites—we're lucky, we're cleansed, we know what life is really all about. What frightens you, doesn't frighten me, what frightens me, you'd laugh at.

Remember, child," her father had drummed into her, "remember that advice, good advice, comes from unexpected places at unexpected times.

Our writers have always pointed the way for us, Mr. Grey, they've formed our thinking and feeling, Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Chekhov, Bunin …" He added with pride, "Writers with us are pathfinders.

It's all shit," he had muttered in English, and felt better.

why remember that nonsense? It weakens the mind.

they set out to acquire—steal—our industrial secrets. "Curiously our free-world media fail dismally to point out that all Soviet advances are based originally on one of our stolen inventions or techniques, that without our grain they starve, and without our vast and ever-growing financial assistance and credits to buy our grains and technology they cannot fuel and refuel their whole military-industrial infrastructure which keeps their empire and people enthralled.

After all those horrors at Changi, you don't detest them?" After a pause Peter Marlowe shook his head. "I don't detest anyone. Even Grey. It takes all of my mind and energy to appreciate that I'm alive.

It's all so simple, Anjin-san. Just change your concept of the world.

Poor God," Blackthorne said. "The stupidities He gets blamed for!

I'd say we're in the sewer, up to our chins, and the tide's coming in fast.

Any history book will tell them China always crosses her borders to protect her buffer zones when any invader approaches

Put not your trust in bloody princes, they can plead expedience.

The sun dances in her and she has an immense joy of life

The Legacy began: "The duty of a lord of a province is to give peace and security to the people and does not consist of shedding luster on his ancestors or working for the prosperity of his descendants.…" One

no man ever willingly marries his mistress.

Men need to share secrets. That's why we're superior to them and they'll always be in our power.

It's the right of every red-blooded American to avoid taxes, but not evade them.

But she wasn't a virgin and that hurt Grey, for she had implied it many times. But he pretended that he didn't know she had cheated him.

It hurts and it costs you. It costs you plenty and the attorneys get most, get a good part and they cleverly fan the fire between you for their own goddamn gain.

Get your wits about you and take the juice out of every day, however bad

I even heard that part of a very large government loan to South Vietnam was expended on a nonexistent airfield that's still impenetrable jungle.