Noble House Quotes

“an able man has many burdens. As I’m abler than most I have to sweat more than most.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“How could such a pretty girl become known as the Hag, she wondered. It must be hateful to become old in face and body when you’re young at heart and still strong and tough—so unfair for a woman.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“All gods bear witness! The Jade Gate and the One-Eyed Monk are truly yin and yang, truly everlasting, truly godlike, both insatiable however much one consumes the other.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“Lend a little and you have a debtor—lend a lot and you have a partner!”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“he’s not very pro-American and it drives him mad that the British Empire’s no more, that the U.S. is arbiter of the world’s fate and making obvious mistakes,”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“Didn’t JFK give Khrushchev a written promise not to invade Cuba, not to permit an invasion from American territory—or from any other place in the Western Hemisphere? Written, by God! So now, a hostile European power, Soviet Russia, totally against your Monroe Doctrine, is openly established ninety miles off your coast, the borders of which are guaranteed in writing by your own President and ratified by your own Congress. The Big K pulled off a colossal coup never duplicated in your whole history. And all for nothing!”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“Russia’s just trying to solve her own problems, Mr. Dunross, one of them’s the U.S. containment policy. They just want to be left alone and not surrounded by highly emotional Americans with their overfed hands on nuclear triggers.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“He took a deep breath of air. Once again he caught a strangeness on the wind, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, neither odor nor perfume—just strange, and curiously exciting. “Superintendent, what’s that smell? Casey noticed it too, the moment Sven opened the door.” Armstrong hesitated. Then he smiled. “That’s Hong Kong’s very own, Mr. Bartlett. It’s money.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“But they’re as Communist as Russia. They went to war against us when we were only trying to protect freedom in South Korea. We weren’t going to attack them.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“You should talk to Ian about Cuba, old chap, that really gets him going. He says, and I agree, you lost. The Soviets sucked you into another trap. A fool’s mate. He believes they built their sites almost openly—wanting you to detect them and you did and then there was a lot of saber-rattling, the whole world’s frightened to death, and in exchange for the Soviet agreement to take the missiles out of Cuba your President tore up your Monroe Doctrine, the cornerstone of your whole security system.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“Any history book will tell them China always crosses her borders to protect her buffer zones when any invader approaches”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“Remember, child,” her father had drummed into her, “remember that advice, good advice, comes from unexpected places at unexpected times.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“Aye. You’ve surely got the right amount of Devil Struan in your blood to serve that master if you’ve a mind.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“The talk had turned to business, and in the few short hours she had learned more about Hong Kong techniques than through all the reading she had done. More and more it was clear that unless you were on the inside, real power and real riches would escape you.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“Changi changed everyone, changed values permanently. For instance, it gave you a dullness about death—we saw too much of it to have the same sort of meaning to outsiders, to normal people. We’re a generation of dinosaurs, we the few who survived. I suppose anyone who goes to war, any war, sees life with different eyes if they end up in one piece.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“Malayan. It means ‘ashamed.’” He smiled to himself. It was a contraction of puki mahlu. Mahlu ashamed, puki a Golden Gulley. Malays grant feelings to that part of a woman: hunger, sadness, kindness, rapaciousness, hesitancy, shame, anger—anything and everything.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“kith or kin lust for power as others do.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“why?” he had asked him. “This guy came up to me in San Diego and said he’d like to know all about the Corregidor and he’d pay.” “But don’t you understand about treason? About betraying your country?” “Hell, all he wanted was a few facts and figures. So what? What’s the difference? We can blast the hell outta the goddamn Commies anytime we like. The Corregidor’s the greatest carrier afloat! It was a caper and I wanted to see if I could do it and they paid on the dot….”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“It’s the right of every red-blooded American to avoid taxes, but not evade them.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“the motor industry, because of its countless allied industries, being the core of any capitalist society.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“Do I want to bed her? Sure. So mount a campaign, maneuver her into bed without commitments. Don’t play the game of life according to female rules, all’s fair in war and war. What’s love anyway? It’s like Casey said, sex’s only a part of it.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“We in the KGB are like Japanese in that we too agree the only sin is failure.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“Those fanatics’ll never live at peace with one another even though they could, easily. They will never bury their differences even if it costs them their stupid lives.” He laughed”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“I really don’t understand them, the capitalists. They delude themselves. We’re openly committed to consume them but they give us the means to do it.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“Now Cuba’s nicely safe, thank you very much, where it’ll grow, expand and eventually infect all South America. Safe for Soviet subs, ships, aircraft.… Christ almighty that’s certainly a marvelous victory!”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“I think the Soviets have deliberately enticed you into Vietnam. You’ll send in troops but they won’t. You’ll be fighting Viets and the jungle, and the Soviets will be the winners. Your CIA’s already there in strength. They’re running an airline. Even now airfields are being constructed with U.S. money, U.S. arms are pouring in. You’ve soldiers fighting there already.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“When the Dragons belch, all Hong Kong defecates.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“A lot of bull that’s worshipped as the be-all and end-all of existence. So much of ‘normal, civilized’ life is bull that you can’t imagine it. For us ex-Changi-ites—we’re lucky, we’re cleansed, we know what life is really all about. What frightens you, doesn’t frighten me, what frightens me, you’d laugh at.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“After all those horrors at Changi, you don’t detest them?” After a pause Peter Marlowe shook his head. “I don’t detest anyone. Even Grey. It takes all of my mind and energy to appreciate that I’m alive.”
― James Clavell, Noble House

“Our writers have always pointed the way for us, Mr. Grey, they’ve formed our thinking and feeling, Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Chekhov, Bunin …” He added with pride, “Writers with us are pathfinders.”
― James Clavell, Noble House