Words matter. These are the best Barry Eisler Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
The two most important things to do for self-defense are not to take a martial arts class or get a gun, but to think like the opposition and know where you’re most at risk.
I’ve loved thrillers and spy stories since I was a kid. It’s probably not a bad rule of thumb to write the kinds of stories you love to read.
The National Surveillance State doesn’t want anyone to be able to communicate without the authorities being able to monitor that communication.
I want to position my books as premium-priced versions on the reasonably-priced scale, if that makes sense, to find a sweet spot between the high-end of what my brand can support and the low end that results in impulse purchases and maximum sales volume.
I love Jet Li, but he looks very Chinese, and his English is Chinese-accented. He wouldn’t have been the right guy to play a Japanese-American.
I can understand the allure of a venerable Big Six imprint, of a shot at the New York Times list, of a publisher-sponsored book tour, of seeing your hardbacks in bookstores and your paperbacks in supermarkets.
Anger, and the self-righteousness that is both the cause and consequence of anger, tends to be easier on the psyche than personal responsibility.
A heart beset by coronary disease will begin to recruit secondary arteries to carry oxygenated blood.
I have a long-standing interest in what I like to think of as ‘forbidden knowledge:’ methods of unarmed killing, lock picking, breaking and entry, spy stuff, and other things that the government wants only a few select individuals to know.
I’m not sure why I’m so drawn to heroes who do bad things and to villains who think they’re the good guys, but I do find that moral ambiguity and conflict makes for great characters.
Good argument is intended to persuade another.
The post office actually achieves its mission. I wish we could say the same of the CIA.
Publishing for me is a business, not an ideology.
Stephen King has inspired me with his humor and honesty, and his admonition that the author’s job is to tell the truth.
The Internet is a limitless library at your fingertips. It’s a great place to start with the acquisition of knowledge. My process is to go to a place when I’m writing about it. Nothing captures the essence, feeling and flavor of a place better than when I’m actually there and doing the writing.
What I care about is readers because without readers I can’t make a living… And I think it’s a bad thing for the world if people don’t read anymore. I want people to read a lot.
The job of the screenplay is to identify and extract the essence of the story from the novel and reconfigure it for the screen, maintaining its essence in a different vehicle.
The fundamental difficulty that most novelists face when they are trying to adapt their own book into a screenplay is realizing that a screenplay is a completely different way of storytelling, and it has limitations.
I was with the CIA for only three years. I worked in the Directorate of Operations, which is now called the National Clandestine Service. It’s the part of the organization where the spies live. I didn’t have much experience beyond the training.
I love Japan, and Tokyo is my favorite city.
Publishing, legacy or indie, is a vehicle, and you can’t opine about whether someone has chosen the right vehicle if you don’t know where she intends to drive it.
I read pretty eclectically – fiction, non-fiction, and poetry – and I’ve been inspired and influenced by a number of writers.
Paper publishers are doing everything they can to slow the transition to eBooks because, in a digital world, paper publishers’ high hardback margins essentially disappear.
There’s an awful lot of corruption in Japanese business and politics, corruption of the sort that can make for great setting for a spy story.
Overall, one of the things that excites me most about self-publishing is that the highest-value use of my time in promoting the books will be found in writing more of them.
When I was in college, I became interested in various aspects of foreign policy and international relations. Even as a kid, I was interested in what I call, loosely speaking, forbidden knowledge.
The most important guideline when it comes to argument is the golden rule. If someone were addressing your point, what tone, what overall approach would you find persuasive and want her to use? Whatever that is, do it yourself.
If the reader cares, I don’t think it matters so much whether your hero is in fact an anti-hero.
When I think of a story, somehow it just always seems to come out involving spooks and spies and government skullduggery.
I make a good living selling hardback books through paper publishers, and I have many friends in the industry who will suffer as it changes, so on a personal level, the transition to digital isn’t something I welcome wholeheartedly.
