Barry Eisler

From the author of Rain Fall comes a new thriller in the John Rain series. Original.

Graveyard of Memories

Stephanie 

If you knew at the outset what you understood at the end, would you make the same choices, take the same risks, accept the same sacrifices?

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 is purposeless, fighting stupidity is futile, and formal recognition prevents people from underestimating you—and thereby from ceding to you surprise and other tactical advantages.

I might have been able to escape, but stun-and-run wasn’t yet part of my close-combat toolkit. My default was continuous offense.

People talk about morality. Sometimes I think there’s just what you can do, and what you can’t.

I would hypothesize that the most insane people are probably also the ones who are best at hiding it and adapt. 

He grunted. “Crazy people don’t always seem crazy.”

That’s something driving me NUTS in movies because it makes no sense. Of course we’d rather wait for our super strong and evil opponent to catch up, right? 😶

You don’t just do everything you possibly can to prevent a fight from being fair—preventing the fight from being fair is the entire point. Do you want the enemy to have as good a chance of killing you as you have of killing him? Or do you want to make sure he gets no chance at all? 

As far as I’m concerned, the people who think a fair fight is desirable can go ahead and die in one.

I was too young to know that some memories don’t fade, or age, or die. That the weight of some of what we do accumulates, expands, coheres, solidifies. 

Being kind and friendly shouldn’t be that hard, and yet for some it seems to be too much to ask. 

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.

This was my life. My reality. My sad, doomed destiny.

Graveyard of Memories quotes

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