“ No aru taka wa, tsume o kakusu, as the Japanese saying goes. The hawk with talent hides its talons. Barry Eisler
“ I’ve gotten used to hoping for so little that I seem to have lost any natural immunity to the emotion’s infection. Barry Eisler
“ It’s been my experience that people who can express their political views only in clichés and passionate generalizations are fanatics. Barry Eisler
“ I was surprised at how much the genuine clothes made me feel like a monk. I would remember that—that the details mattered, not just in how you looked, but in how you felt, in the kind of unconscious v… Barry Eisler
“ I spotted Delilah instantly. She was one of a handful of people quietly attending the room’s lone baccarat table, and the only non-Asian in sight. She was dressed plainly, in black pants and a black,… Barry Eisler
“ I learned a long time ago not to trust, that faith is to life what sticking your chin out is to boxing. Barry Eisler
“ For some, the distance between who you were and who you have become is unbridgeable, and the dissonance attempted repatriation creates is a constant reminder of the very changes you want so badly to f… Barry Eisler
“ Both women had been wearing earbuds—one of the many things Livia taught her self-defense students never to do, because demonstrating both that you can’t hear and that you’re too naïve to know better i… Barry Eisler
“ Between her hand over my heart and her hips at my crotch, she might as well have been administering a polygraph. Barry Eisler
“ Client? I asked the same question. Hort wouldn’t tell me. For your ears only. But if you want to share, I’m a good listener. I said Barry Eisler
“ We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. —T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets Barry Eisler
“ Three guys just tried to kill me in Hong Kong. What? Three guys just tried to kill me in Hong Kong. I heard you. Are you serious? I didn’t detect anything in his voice, but it was hard to tell over th… Barry Eisler
“ The waiter brought the drinks. After he had moved silently away, I looked at her and said, You’re not involved in any of this? She looked into her glass. Several seconds went by. You want an honest an… Barry Eisler
“ So much of being a good interrogator was just knowing how to actively listen to someone, Barry Eisler
“ 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. Barry Eisler
“ It’s funny to consider how important things like that felt to me then. Proving people wrong. Fighting stupidity. Wanting formal recognition. It took me a long time to learn that proving people wrong i… Barry Eisler
