Quotes from Eric Van Lustbader

Keep your friends close, Sun-Tzu had written. Your enemies closer.

Laughing at what you didn't have and never would was better than letting it depress you

In Morocco, he was back in his element, a shark moving through deep and dangerous waters. But for thousands of years sharks have been bred to survive dark and dangerous waters. So too, Leonid Arkadin.

We're brought up with a kind of romanticism that's so false it leads us astray. Falling in love and marriage is forever. The movies, then TV told us that, even—especially—the commercials.

To survive is not enough. - Bujun saying

To abandon duty is to destroy that which makes any individual unique and capable of prodigious feats.

Anticipation, she would say, locks you into a mind-set, which, whether you realize it or not, dictates your actions, even though they may be the wrong ones. If you don't anticipate, your mind is clear, your actions develop as the situation unfolds.

All of life's great lessons involve loss

A cretin can kill you just as efficiently as a genius, and usually a whole lot quicker because a cretin has no conscience.

Take the hand you're dealt and then finesse it

haragei—the art of balance and power emanating from the lower belly. Haragei was the basis of all Japanese martial arts, from sumo to karate to the almost extinct harakei. The

Up until the nineteenth century the Rialto was the only link between the two sides of the city.

Some people should never have children.

To the novice, it doubtless seems a conundrum that lies can have their basis in fact. Consider, however, the individual's need to have his or her desires met. This is fact. If lies are clever enough to fulfill this desire, they become a truth and, therefore, that much harder to dispel.

Survival is not enough. Sardine

he was a child of eight, in the aftermath of his first kill. The first taste of blood was always the sharpest, but, for him, the blood didn't matter as much as it did

war is long, life is short.

change begins with freedom from the past.

passion is like sand. It disappears no matter how tightly one tries to hold on to it.

it was not in gaining the power where the danger lay. It was in allowing the power to destroy you.

Modern empires rise and fall not on armies, ideology, or violence, but on the instantaneous flow of capital. —Boris Karpov

The past is littered with regret, the future bound by anxiety. The time is always now.

after just having finished a breakfast of soft-boiled eggs, toast, and coffee. Her room was huge, more like a

faith is a tree, growing new branches even in the face of a storm. And when the time is right, those new branches bear fruit. It's faith that sustains me, faith that makes sense out of chaos, faith that holds the world together in the face of crisis." She took another, smaller drag from the cigarette. "I wish I could make you understand. When you have faith, despair is not an option. I grieve for Dad. Inside I'm crushed because a part