A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2) QUOTES

1 " I thought of an old poker players’ expression: If you look around the table and can’t spot the sucker, the sucker is you. "

― Barry Eisler , A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2)

2 " People have rituals for communing with the dead, rituals that depend more on the idiosyncrasies of the individual than on the influence of culture. Some visit gravesites. Some talk to portraits, or mantelpiece urns. Some go to spots favored by the deceased during life, or mouth silent prayers in houses of worship, or have trees planted in memory in some far-off land. The common denominator, of course, is a sense beyond logic that the dead are aware of all this, that they can hear the prayers and witness the deeds and feel the ongoing love and longing. People seem to find that sense comforting. I don’t believe any of it. I’ve never seen a soul depart from a body. I’ve never been haunted by a ghost, angry or loving. I’ve never been rewarded or punished or touched by some traveler from the undiscovered country. I know as well as I know anything the dead are simply dead. "

― Barry Eisler , A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2)

3 " In my unpleasant experience, unarmed against a knife, you’ve basically got four options. Your best bet is to run like hell, if you can. Next best is to do something immediately that prevents the attack from getting started. Third is to create distance so you can deploy a longer-range weapon. Fourth is to go berserk and hope not to get fatally cut going through and over your attacker. I don’t care how much training you’ve had, these are your only realistic options, and none of them is particularly good except maybe the first. Unarmed techniques against the knife are a crapshoot, and against a determined attacker with a live blade, they offer piss-poor odds. "

― Barry Eisler , A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2)

4 " I didn’t say, “I’ll call you.” I didn’t hug her because of the wet clothes. Just a quick kiss. Then I turned and left. I made my way quietly down the hallway to the stairwell. I could tell she thought she wasn’t going to see me again. I had to admit she might be right. The knowledge was as damp and dispiriting as my sodden clothes. I came to the first floor and looked out at the entranceway of the building. For a second I pictured the way she had hugged me here. It already seemed like a long time ago. I felt an unpleasant mixture of gratitude and longing, streaked with guilt and regret. And in a flash of insight, cutting with cold clarity through the fog of my fatigue, I realized what I hadn’t been able to articulate earlier, not even to myself, when she’d asked me what I was afraid of. It had been this, the moment after, when I would come face to face with knowing that it would all end badly, if not this morning, then the next one. Or the one after that. "

― Barry Eisler , A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2)

5 " I looked out at the street beyond the overhang. The rain was coming in at gray angled streaks. One of my hands moved to her cheek. I closed my eyes. Her skin was wet from the rain and I thought of tears. "

― Barry Eisler , A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2)

6 " And I resented you for that,” she went on, “because I’ve always believed hate is such an unworthy emotion. So weak and ultimately pointless.” I marveled briefly at how innocent a life someone would have to have led for such a philosophy to emerge credible and intact, and for a second I loved her for it. "

― Barry Eisler , A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2)

7 " killing is the ultimate expression of hatred and fear, as sex is the ultimate expression of romantic love and desire. And, as with sex, killing a stranger who has otherwise provoked no emotion is inherently unnatural. I suppose you could say that a man who kills a stranger is not unlike a woman who has sex under analogous circumstances. That a man who is paid to kill is like a woman who is paid to fuck. Certainly the man is subject to the same reluctance, the same numbing, the same regrets. The same damage to the soul. "

― Barry Eisler , A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2)

8 " Fat droplets of rain started spattering against the city’s concrete skin, against the glass windows of its eyes. A few people with umbrellas opened them. The rest ran for cover. I walked on, through it all. I tried to think of it as a baptism, a new beginning. Maybe it was. But what a lonely resurrection. "

― Barry Eisler , A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2)

9 " Think about it. Ever look in a closet or under the bed, when you’re alone in the house, to ensure an intruder isn’t hiding there? Now, if you really believed the Man in the Black Ski Mask was lurking in those places, would you behave the same way? Of course not. But it’s more comfortable to believe the danger only in the abstract, and to act on it only halfheartedly. That’s denial. "

― Barry Eisler , A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2)

10 " Is she your first girlfriend?” I asked, my tone gentle. “I told you, she’s not really my girlfriend,” he said, ducking the question. “If she’s occupying enough of your attention to keep you in bed until the sun sets, I feel safe using the word as shorthand. "

― Barry Eisler , A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2)

11 " Some vicious thing inside me stirred. I felt it in my gut, the back of my neck, my hands. I thought of Musashi, the master swordsman, who wrote, You must think of neither victory nor of defeat, but only of cutting and killing your enemy. "

― Barry Eisler , A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2)

12 " Had I not known that I was dead already I would have mourned my loss of life. —last words of Ota Dokan, scholar of military arts and poet, 1486 "

― Barry Eisler , A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2)

13 " He was blushing. Christ, the kid was so transparent. “Harry, are you going to tell me you’ve got a girlfriend?” I asked. The blush deepened, and I laughed. “I’ll be damned,” I said. “Good for you.” He looked at me, checking to see whether I was going to tease him. “She’s not exactly my girlfriend.” “Well, never mind the taxonomy. How did you meet her?” “Work. "

― Barry Eisler , A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2)

14 " Well, the club is open until three in the morning and she works every day. So, by the time she gets home…” “I get the picture,” I said. Though in fact, it was a little hard to imagine Harry with an attachment that didn’t have an Ethernet cable and a mouse. He was an introverted, socially stunted guy, with no contacts I knew of outside of his day job, which he kept at arm’s length in any event, and me. Conditions that had always made him useful. "

― Barry Eisler , A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2)

15 " I hadn’t meant to embarrass him. “Harry, I only ask because, when you’re young, you sometimes think you can have it both ways. If you’re just having fun, you don’t need to tell her anything. You shouldn’t tell her anything. But if the attachment gets deeper, you’ll need to do some hard thinking. About how close you want to get with her, about how important your hobbies are. Because you can’t live with one foot in daylight and the other in shadows. Believe me on this. It can’t be done. Not long-term.” “I’m not stupid, you know.” “Everybody in love is stupid. It’s part of the condition. "

― Barry Eisler , A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2)

16 " When I was ready, I eased in beside him. Immediately I felt my muscles trying to shrink back from the heat, and knew that in a moment they would give up their fruitless struggle and surrender to delirious relaxation. "

― Barry Eisler , A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2)

17 " Immediately the sounds of the street below grew detached, distant, the meaningless echoes of urban voices whose urgent notes reached but held no sway over the park-like necropolis within. From where I stood, the cemetery seemed to have no end. It stretched out before me, a city in its own right, its myriad markers windowless tenements in miniature, laid out in still symmetry, long boulevards of the dead. "

― Barry Eisler , A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2)

18 " He smiled. “What’s going on?” “Why does something have to be going on? Maybe I just missed you.” He gave me an uncharacteristically streetwise look. I had a feeling I knew where he’d picked it up. “Yeah, I missed you, too.” I wasn’t looking forward to the turn the conversation would take when I brought up Yukiko, and felt no hurry to get there. A waitress came by. Harry ordered a coffee and some carrot cake. "

― Barry Eisler , A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2)

19 " Open your eyes, you idiot, I wanted to say. This woman is a shark. She’s from a different world, a different species. There’s something way fucking wrong here. Instead: “Harry, my gut tends to be pretty good about these things. "

― Barry Eisler , A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2)

20 " He shrugged. “Maybe you’re afraid I won’t help you anymore. You said it yourself: ‘You can’t live with one foot in daylight and the other in shadows.’ Maybe you’re afraid I’ll move into the daylight and leave you behind.” I felt a wave of angry indignation and willed it back. “Let me tell you something, kid,” I said. “In a very short while, I plan to be living in the daylight myself. I won’t need your ‘help’ after that. So even if I were the selfish, manipulative piece of shit you seem to think I am, I wouldn’t have any motive to try to keep you in the shadows.” He flushed. “I’m sorry,” he said, after a moment. I waved a hand. “Forget it. "

― Barry Eisler , A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain, #2)