Barry Eisler Quotes
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The difference between being a victim and a survivor is often a low level of situational awareness. You can't be a super-spy, watchful and paranoid every day. But I am more watchful than the average American.
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Publishing, legacy or indie, is a vehicle, and you can't opine about whether someone has chosen the right vehicle if you don't know where she intends to drive it.
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I love Japan, and Tokyo is my favorite city.
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Good argument is intended to persuade another.
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The National Surveillance State doesn't want anyone to be able to communicate without the authorities being able to monitor that communication.
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A heart beset by coronary disease will begin to recruit secondary arteries to carry oxygenated blood.
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What I care about is readers because without readers I can't make a living... And I think it's a bad thing for the world if people don't read anymore. I want people to read a lot.
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The Internet is a limitless library at your fingertips. It's a great place to start with the acquisition of knowledge. My process is to go to a place when I'm writing about it. Nothing captures the essence, feeling and flavor of a place better than when I'm actually there and doing the writing.
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The fundamental difficulty that most novelists face when they are trying to adapt their own book into a screenplay is realizing that a screenplay is a completely different way of storytelling, and it has limitations.
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I was with the CIA for only three years. I worked in the Directorate of Operations, which is now called the National Clandestine Service. It's the part of the organization where the spies live. I didn't have much experience beyond the training.
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When I wrote my eighth thriller, 'Inside Out,' in 2009, the villains were a group of CIA and other government officials who colluded to destroy a series of tapes depicting Americans torturing war-on-terror prisoners.
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Psychologically, it's always more pleasurable to blame others for our problems than it is to acknowledge our own responsibility.
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Books are my art. The movie is someone else's art. But it's great marketing for books.
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I love Jet Li, but he looks very Chinese, and his English is Chinese-accented. He wouldn't have been the right guy to play a Japanese-American.
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I'm not sure why I'm so drawn to heroes who do bad things and to villains who think they're the good guys, but I do find that moral ambiguity and conflict makes for great characters.
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When I was in college, I became interested in various aspects of foreign policy and international relations. Even as a kid, I was interested in what I call, loosely speaking, forbidden knowledge.
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The strangest thing about the low quality of Internet argument is that effective argument isn't really so difficult. Sure, not everyone can be Clarence Darrow, but anyone who wants to be at least competent at argument can do it.
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After I sold my screenplay adaptation of 'Rain Fall' to Sony Pictures, I had no more creative involvement.
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The two most important things to do for self-defense are not to take a martial arts class or get a gun, but to think like the opposition and know where you're most at risk.
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If the reader cares, I don't think it matters so much whether your hero is in fact an anti-hero.
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Publishing for me is a business, not an ideology.
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I read pretty eclectically - fiction, non-fiction, and poetry - and I've been inspired and influenced by a number of writers.
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I can understand the allure of a venerable Big Six imprint, of a shot at the New York Times list, of a publisher-sponsored book tour, of seeing your hardbacks in bookstores and your paperbacks in supermarkets.
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At the national level, I don't know how to describe a threat to destroy Country A in order to punish Country B other than to call it state terrorism.