The Chaos Kind (John Rain, #11, Livia Lone, #5)

by Barry Eisler

The object of power is power. —George Orwell

Power was like a magnet, keeping everything rigid and straight and proper. But without the magnet, it all collapsed into disorganized scrap.

Information came with a price tag, and the shrewd players were careful to conceal their eagerness to buy.

It’s not enough to know your way in. You have to know your way out.

In his experience, the maid often knew more than the lord of the manor.

“Don’t let yourself get so distracted by what’s stamped secret that you forget to read the news.”

two great tastes didn’t always taste great together.

Reloader was a term he’d picked up from Dox. It meant someone so formidable you’d empty the whole magazine into him, eject, reload, and empty the second magazine, too, just to be sure.

If you want to get something you never had before, you have to do something you’ve never done before.

“I’m joking, of course,” he said. “And by joking, I mean eighty percent serious.”

We need to shake up the board, and good. Because when order is your enemy, chaos is your friend.”

Some civilians, when they found themselves suddenly in the shit, broke down. Stopped eating, stopped sleeping, got withdrawn. Set themselves up for a vicious cycle. Others were more adaptable.

The truth was, most people had a deep-seated need to unburden themselves. It was just a question of the right timing, and circumstances, and confessor.

“There’s a saying I like. ‘Denial has no survival value.’ If you’re going to play, you have to at least recognize what the game is.”

Don’t bring a lawbook to a gunfight.’”

Randomness can buy you a second. And if you don’t think a second’s a long time, you’ve never been in a gunfight.”

You could get the establishment media to print anything on background, and then quote it yourself later as proof of the need for whatever policy you were selling.

eventually they’d exhaust the media, and it would move on to the next glittering object. In the end, it always did.

Should be just a quick in and out.” “Why does that sound familiar?” Dox laughed again. “Because women say it’s your only means of lovemaking?”

He’d always understood that knowledge is power, and he had sought knowledge accordingly. But the most powerful knowledge of all was knowledge you had—and that others lacked. Which was to say, knowledge was power only when it was your knowledge. What gave you power over others was their ignorance. Asymmetrical knowledge, otherwise known as intelligence. And he was in the intelligence business.

“as Nicolas Cage put it in Con Air, ‘On any other day, that might seem strange.’”

Hunger was the best seasoning, and exhaustion the best soporific.

when people came across a sword—especially one others were trying to acquire—they tended to conclude that the best possibility would be to find a way by which they themselves could wield it.

Good security could be thought of as concentric circles,

Better to be blind than to have your eyes deceive you.