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

by Barry Eisler

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

Trauma never went away. You could try to block it, or bury it, or bludgeon it into submission. But something with that much power couldn’t really be contained. The best you could hope for was a way to channel it.

But if there was one thing she had learned in this man’s world, it was the danger of doing anything that could be disparaged as “emotional.” Men could shout, they could rant, they could even cry, and they were just being assertive, or passionate, or caring. But for women, the same behaviors were bitchy. Or unhinged. Or worst of all, weak.

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

“Behind a book called Recursion, by Blake Crouch. Level three. Fiction.”

“I wouldn’t get too close,” Dox said. “Thankfully I’m immune to Ebola from my time combatting the disease in Africa, and am no longer infectious myself. I’m pretty sure.”

“I’ll tell you, I don’t like the order of battle right now. We need to shake up the board, and good. Because when order is your enemy, chaos is your friend.”

‘Denial has no survival value.’ If you’re going to play, you have to at least recognize what the game is.”

“Well, that’s one way. But you want to hear another expression I like?” She didn’t answer, and he went on. “‘Don’t bring a lawbook to a gunfight.’”

a Zen concept called mushin—literally meaning “no-mind,” but in fact a description of a relaxed mind, a mind open to everything and therefore able to instantly react to anything.

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.

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.