Michael Ryan

“Beyond the shops though, Shtawrah was no different from the rest of the Biqai' The day I arrived there, I passed by the smouldering ruins of a training camp for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command on the edge of town. A squad of Israeli F16s had flattened it the day before. I was curious about the raid and asked Ghazali, whose supermarket was Shtawrah's main grocery store, if the raid worried him. He shrugged, "We're in business, what can we do?"
Actually, Ghazal's answer made perfect sense. There was nothing any of the Lebanese in the Biqai' could do about a roster of neighbours that included Hezbollah, the Japanese Red Army, Baader-Meinhof, Sendero Luminosa, the PFLP, Abu Nidal, ASALA and half a dozen other suicidal and or genocidal terrorist groups. As long as the Israeli airforce continued to shoot straight, the Lebanese could get on with life and make a little money, especially if they took care of their own safety. Ghazali's clerks carried 9mm semiautomatics in shoulder holsters; and his assistant, whose office was behind a bulletproof window, kept an AK47 with a drum magazine on his desk and a clear field of fire down the aisles.”
― Robert Baer

“If you hang around the subprime lending business long enough, you'll meet your share of interesting borrowers: strippers, cons, pimps, thugs and various other upstanding citizens of the community. These were not out typical customers. But if a borrower has credit problems and a checkered past, employment gaps and income from unverifiable sources, he usually ends up talking with a subprime lender.”
― Richard Bitner, Confessions of a Subprime Lender: An Insider's Tale of Greed, Fraud, and Ignorance

“If I gun down my boss in the carpark after work then he won't be able to terrorise all his other employees and the greater good will have been served.”
― Rushworth M Kidder, How Good People Make Tough Choices

“following a [software development] process as agile as a cashier on Quaaludes.”
― Eric Brechner, I. M. Wright's Hard Code