Barry Eisler Quotes

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

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

Barry Eisler

It's a strange thing, having a child, he said. It completely alters your most fundamental priorities. When my eldest daughter was born, I realized that I would do anything - anything - to protect her....

It's a strange thing, having a child, he said. It completely alters your most fundamental priorities. When my eldest daughter was born, I realized that I would do anything - anything - to protect her....

Barry Eisler

Tags: parenthood, parents and children, sacrifice for others, value of life

About Author

Barry Mark Eisler (born 1964) is a best-selling American novelist. He is the author of two thriller series, the first featuring anti-hero John Rain, a half-Japanese, half-American former soldier turned freelance assassin, and a second featuring black ops soldier Ben Treven. Eisler also writes about politics and language on his blog Heart of the Matter, and at the blogs CHUD, Firedoglake, The Huffington Post, MichaelMoore.com, The Smirking Chimp, and Truthout.

Barry Eisler Quotes

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

It's a strange thing, having a child, he said. It completely alters your most fundamental priorities. When my eldest daughter was born, I realized that I would do anything - anything - to protect her....

About Author

Most people are like sheep. Nice, harmless creatures who want nothing more than to be left alone so they can graze. But then of course there are wolves. Who want nothing more than to eat the sheep.But...

I considered. As Tatsu noted, if word got out, the efficacy of the camera network would be compromised. But there was more.

Killing is the ultimate expression of hatred and fear, as sex is the ultimate expression of romantic love and desire. And, as with sex, killing a stranger who has otherwise provoked no emotion is inhe...

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.

Sang-froid

My American and Japanese personalities are distinct, and I carry myself differently depending on which language I’m using and which mode I’m in.

I shifted my head slightly. The corners of our mouths brushed together. I felt her breath on my cheek. Then we were kissing. Her mouth was warm and soft. Our tongues entwined and simultaneously I thou...

Suffering in the midst of the vast city from solitude so acute that not even the narcotic of late-night television talk shows could distract them from occasional nocturnal forays in search of signs of...

But denial . . . well, you know what they say about denial. Ben nodded, seeing where this was going now, not wanting to show what he really thought of it. It has no survival value.

I can’t tell you. But we know. She took a sip of caipirinha. Just trust me. I laughed. She retracted her head in mock indignation. But I trusted you. I got you out of his suite, didn’t I? When you tho...

I read Reinhold Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society, where Niebuhr talked about how the baser self has to deceive the better self to get the better self’s buy-in for behavior it would never otherw...

We were quiet for a moment. Then I said, Look, I’ve got an idea of what you feel for this woman, okay? I saw her. She’s a head-turner. She’s more than that, he said softly. The dumb, sappy bastard. Hi...

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 e...

She remembered something her mother had told her when she was a teenager: The boy you date is different from the boy you’re engaged to, the boy you’re engaged to is different from the man you marry, t...

She nodded. At first what I thought I wanted was revenge. I kept thinking of how to hurt you, how to cause you pain, like the pain you caused me. I wasn’t surprised. And I resented you for that, she w...

She looked at me. You’re an assassin, aren’t you? When there are rumors the government has someone on the payroll, they’re talking about you, right? I let out a long exhalation. Something like that. T...

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.

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...