Eric Van Lustbader Quotes
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Jason Bourne was the name of someone in American military intelligence—a traitor who was shot dead for his crime. When the present Bourne was recruited into Treadstone he was given the name of the dead man.
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Some people should never have children.
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Extremism catches hold when all hope is gone, when a human being has been stripped of everything except hatred.
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Designed in the neoclassical style by Marcel Dourgnon, the dusky-rose-colored Egyptian Museum of Antiquities, at Tahrir Square, was the first purpose-built museum edifice in the world. In 1902, the thousands of artifact treasures, spanning five thousand years of Egyptian dynastic history, were transferred there from the palace of Ismail Pasha in Giza, where they had been displayed for more than a decade.
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Laughing at what you didn't have and never would was better than letting it depress you.
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I can't write a scene unless I've visualized it. Unless I can actually see it, and that's why a lot of reviewers have said my books are very cinematic, because I actually do see them before I write them.
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Take the hand you’re dealt and then finesse it.
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If one person believes a story, it becomes a truth—for him. That’s why history is such a mare’s nest: it’s difficult to determine what happened as opposed to what people thought happened, wanted to happen, felt should have happened. The slant is everything.
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The worst your enemy can do is kill you. The worst your enemy can do is betray you. Fear only the indifferent because at their silent consent treachery and death flourish.
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Jacqueline Carey has created a postmodern fable of enormous scope and force. Santa Olivia is at once a cautionary tale of people caught in a web of lies and creeping terror, and a love song to the beauty and power of being different. At the novel's heart is the kind of grace Carey is known for: an illumination of the strength that lies hidden inside all of us.
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Someone had lit a kerosene lamp. By the inconstant light of its flickering flame, they stared at him out of emaciated faces with overlarge eyes, their bodies pale beneath tattered clothes. Once again Bourne’s heart was rent. He wanted to save them all, but to save two he needed to leave the others behind. He’d never make it out with all of them in tow.
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The interior of the Zigana Mosque, a beehivelike geodesic dome composed of pointed arches of honey-colored stone, was based on al-Biruni’s sacred geometry.
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If you insist on reducing it to its basic elements, it's the sure and simple knowledge that there's something more out there, something greater than yourself, than mankind: a grand plan, a design that can't be comprehended by you or by any other human being, because it is numinous, it is God's design, something only He can fathom.
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To abandon duty is to destroy that which makes any individual unique and capable of prodigious feats.
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Keep your friends close, Sun-Tzu had written. Your enemies closer.
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Because doing the right thing is not the goal, doing the best thing is what you must strive for.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Only in the stillness of thought can decisions be properly made.
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The past is littered with regret, the future bound by anxiety. The time is always now.
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I never used an outline until I started "The Bourne Legacy" project for which I was required to write an outline. To be honest, I thought I'd hate the idea, assuming that if I'd thought of all the ideas at the outset I'd have to incentive to actually write the book, because for me part of the joy of writing are the surprises you come upon as the book takes shape. But something curious and exciting happened. As I wrote the outline, some sections would be very detailed, others quite sketchy, so that whole portions of the book would be covered by one line, such as "Bourne is chased by Khan through Budapest," which when I wrote the novel turned out to be 40-50 pages! Now I'll never write a novel without first doing an outline. Looking back on it, I used to get bogged down in extraneous characters and situations, especially during the first 100 pages (which I find the most difficult to write) that I would later have to scrap, wasting time and energy, and frustrating me. Now that never happens.
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I care about this woman deeply. I care what she thinks and what she does. I care what happened to her and what will happen to her. I want to keep her safe.
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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.