Graveyard of Memories Quotes

“It’s funny to consider how important things like that felt to me then. Proving people wrong. Fighting stupidity. Wanting formal recognition. It took me a long time to learn that proving people wrong is purposeless, fighting stupidity is futile, and formal recognition prevents people from underestimating you—and thereby from ceding to you surprise and other tactical advantages.”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“It took me a long time to learn that proving people wrong is purposeless, fighting stupidity is futile, and formal recognition prevents people from underestimating you—and thereby from ceding to you surprise and other tactical advantages.”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“Better a wise rōnin, I decided, than a naïve samurai.”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“Sometimes I go to her Facebook page. It’s silly, I know. Pathetic. And every time I do, I promise myself next time I’ll be stronger. I don’t even know what impels me. Why are the most painful memories also the sweetest; why does the sweetness always draw us back no matter how long the pain might have kept us away beforehand? I don’t know, any more than I know why sometimes I have to sit in the dark and listen to Terumasa Hino playing “Alone, Alone and Alone.” I just do. I can’t seem to help periodically disinterring that little box of memories, no matter how lachrymose its contents. I try to stop. But sometimes there’s just what you can do, and what you can’t.”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“What was that Churchill saying? “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” That’s what this felt like.”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“Relax,” he said again, probably reading my thoughts from my expression. “I’ll get you the other file.” I considered telling him what would happen if he didn’t, but recognized that doing so would have been childish, the product of ego. Worse, because he already knew what would happen, verbalizing it could only serve to dilute the strength of the threat. Because why would anyone waste breath describing what was already axiomatic? I didn’t realize it right away, but that was a big moment in my development. Self-awareness leading to self-control. I had a long way to go, but you have to start somewhere.”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“The guy was shrewder than he looked. I realized I had given too much credence to the scrawny body and the obvious age, and had underestimated him. Watching him set up what would be our makeshift classroom, I wondered whether there would be some value to that. Getting people to underestimate you. Not letting them see what was under the hood. Preventing them from seeing it coming. I thought of the Japanese expression Nō aru taka wa, tsume o kakusu. The hawk with talent hides its talons. It had always been just that for me, an expression. But for the first time, I felt an inkling of what it might really imply.”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“If you knew at the outset what you understood at the end, would you make the same choices, take the same risks, accept the same sacrifices? No. No one would. You can’t appreciate the weight of that burden until after you’ve assumed it. You can’t comprehend what it really means.”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“If there’s one lesson I learned early on during the decades I’ve spent in this business, it’s that of all the qualities that distinguish a hard target from everyone else, among the most important is self-control. Yes, you have to be able to think like the opposition, which enables you to spot the ambush. And yes, you have to be able to take immediate, violent action in case—oops—your ability to spot the ambush fails. And yes, sentiment is a weakness. But fundamental to the rest is self-control. Because if you’re not in control of yourself, someone else is, most likely an enemy, and in my business, an enemy isn’t someone who wants the promotion you’re after, or who covets your corner office, or who wants to beat you on the tennis court or golf course or display a better car in his driveway. In my business, an enemy is someone determined to end your life, and probably with the means to bring it about.”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“Among people who use violence, there’s only one real dividing line. Either you have limits. Or you don’t.” “Well, the reasons are important, too.” “Up to a point. But everyone believes his own reasons are good ones. In the end, it’s the limits that separate men from monsters.”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“I didn’t pause to consider whether those earlier, seemingly innocent conversations over coffee had in fact been more akin to job interviews. Nor did I wonder if we ever recognize the forks in the road we sometimes come to. They’re not common in life, and they’re never marked. Certainly, I didn’t recognize this one. Or maybe I just didn’t want to.”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“there are no bad guys, any more than there are good guys. There are only smart people, and stupid ones; puppets, and puppet masters”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“unconscious expectations were simply assumptions based primarily on foolish prejudice, itself likely the product of a lack of thought and experience”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“lachrymose”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“cabal”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“Elysian”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“elided”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“simulacra.”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“axiomatic?”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“deracinated”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“redolent”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“Why are the most painful memories also the sweetest; why does the sweetness always draw us back no matter how long the pain might have kept us away beforehand?”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“Why are the most painful memories also the sweetest; why does the sweetness always draw us back no matter how long the pain might have kept us away beforehand? I don’t know,”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“People talk about morality. Sometimes I think there’s just what you can do, and what you can’t. Well, I could. And I was going to.”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“My mother had tried to raise me as a Catholic, but war had deracinated whatever meager plantings her efforts had achieved. No God ever would have stood silent spectator to what I saw in Vietnam. To what I did there. Either there was no God, or there was and he didn’t give a damn.”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“You have to remember, the history the powers-that-be feed you always excludes what they managed to bury. Or whom.”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“Life can only be understood backward; but it must be lived forward. —Kierkegaard”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“would show that inside twenty-one feet against a knife, trying to get a gun out is typically a losing bet, especially if you’re backing straight up rather than getting off the line.”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“I miss her. God, I do. It’s beyond missing; it’s a kind of mourning. And not just for everything we had, but for everything we might have had, could have had, if only I had made other choices, if only I had been someone else, or something else. But who, or what, would that be? I try to imagine it and I can’t. It feels like a delusion, a deception, a dream. All the world’s a stage, isn’t that what Shakespeare said? And all the men and women merely players. And so they are. So we all are. But that’s poetry. The prose is simpler. Sometimes there’s just what you can do. And what you can’t.”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories

“I wish I’d told her I loved her. It bothers me that I didn’t. I’d been so close, and then I’d held back. I tell myself it would have made no difference, and I believe that’s true. But at least then she would have known.”
― Barry Eisler, Graveyard of Memories