The essence of samurai is not just service, but loyalty to his master, to a cause greater than himself.
Strangeland’s confidence in her, the risks she was willing to run . . . it was all producing a roiling mess of emotion she couldn’t deal with right now. She managed to push it away and handed
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.
She spun and faced me, one hand on her wounded posterior. Her eyes were wide, her nostrils flared with shock and anger. In my peripheral vision, I saw her weight shift to her back leg, and thought she...
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...
People put out signals—body language, gait, clothes, facial expression, posture, attitude, speech, mannerisms—that can tell you where they’re from, what they do, who they are. Most importantly, do the...
My mother would have wanted me to say a prayer, crossing myself at its conclusion, and had this been her grave, I would have done so. But such a western ritual would have been an insult to my father i...
Karate moved slowly through the lobby. His gaze went to Belghazi and his eyes hardened in a way that would mean nothing to most people but that meant a great deal to me. From this gaze I understood Ka...
It’s like America, he went on. I mean look at us, we’re always telling ourselves how peace-loving we are. ‘We’re a peace-loving people, we love peace.’ I guess that’s why we spend more on our military...
I wiped water from my face and thought, Time to go. But I remained. Thanks for an interesting evening, she said, after a pause. You’re not a bad guy, for a stalker. I gave her a half smile. That’s wha...
I told myself it was all right, I wasn’t disappointed, it was better this way. I wondered in a detached way whether it was all part of some cosmic punishment for Crazy Jake, the blood brother I had ki...
I thought of an expression my father had once told me: Be good to people on your way up. You may meet them again on your way down.
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light; I would spread the cloths under your feet...
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.
Boxers wear tape to protect their hands. But you get dependent on the tape, and then you don’t know how to hit someone without it. Even Mike Tyson once broke a hand when he hit another fighter barehan...
Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.
Asian face and local language skills to handle the cash. I had just returned to the States from Vietnam, having left the military under a cloud, the origins of which I was able to understand only year...
After all, 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 emot...
A survivor reassesses odds continually and doesn’t disrespect them.
A friend who loves Paris once told me, ‘There aren’t many things we humans need to do. We need to eat, we need to drink, we need to make love. And the French attitude is, okay, we should do those thin...