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Book: Winner Take All
Quotes of Book: Winner Take All
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  1. Barry Eisler _ Winner Take All

    I was impressed. I had been taking care not to stand out or to otherwise become memorable, and he had spotted me anyway. He was well attuned to his environment, to the patterns that might at some point make the difference between winning and losing. Or living and dying.
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  2. Barry Eisler _ Winner Take All

    Gradually our surroundings became more residential. We passed wide, open doorways. These I checked automatically, but they offered no danger, only miscellaneous domestic scenes: four elderly women absorbed in a game of mahjong; a group of boys surrounding a television; a family at the supper table. We passed an old shrine, its red paint peeling in the tropical moisture. Incense from the brazier within pervaded my senses with the recollected emotions of childhood.
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  3. Barry Eisler _ Winner Take All

    I played baccarat at the upscale Bellagio; roulette at the off-strip Rio; craps at the fading Riviera, whose attempts to match the gayness and glitter around her felt forced, artificial, like makeup layered on by a woman who recognizes she was never beautiful to begin with and has now, in addition, grown colorless and old.
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  4. Barry Eisler _ Winner Take All

    I knew the persona I was inhabiting-moneyed Japanese gaming enthusiast-would lack crucial verisimilitude if the persona in question had never set eyes on Las Vegas.
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  5. Barry Eisler _ Winner Take All

    We shall not cease from exploration, some poet wrote. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time. How incredibly fucking depressing.
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  6. Barry Eisler _ Winner Take All

    I heard laughter and looked up. Some kids at the terminal next to me, playing an online game. I wondered for a moment how I had gotten here. And I wondered if maybe this is what Tatsu had meant when he said I could never retire. That I would inevitably ruin every other possibility.
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  7. Barry Eisler _ Winner Take All

    He shrugged. "You know I was in the dark about all that as much as you were. This time it's straightforward. And sanctioned." "Sanctioned by whom?" He looked at me. "By the proper authorities." "All right," I said, taking a sip from the porcelain demitasse. "Tell me." He leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. "After nine-eleven, Congress took the shackles off the Agency. There's a new spirit in the place. We're pushing the envelope again, going after the bad guys-" "The few, the proud?" He frowned. "Look, we're really making a difference now-" "Be all that you can be?" His jaw clenched. "Do you just enjoy pissing me off?" "A bit, yes." "It's petty." I took another sip of espresso. "What's your point?" "I wish you'd just listen." "So far I've listened to five clichés, including something about shackled envelopes. I'm waiting for you to actually say something." He flushed, but then nodded and even managed a chuckle. I smiled at his composure. He had matured since I had last seen him.
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  8. Barry Eisler _ Winner Take All

    Karate moved slowly through the lobby. His gaze went to Belghazi and his eyes hardened in a way that would mean nothing to most people but that meant a great deal to me. From this gaze I understood Karate wasn't looking at a man. No. What I saw instead was a hunter acquiring a target.
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  9. Barry Eisler _ Winner Take All

    What did Ian Fleming say? Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action. And I don't believe in waiting for even that much evidence. It was past time to act.
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  10. Barry Eisler _ Winner Take All

    I learned a long time ago not to trust, that faith is to life what sticking your chin out is to boxing.
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  11. Barry Eisler _ Winner Take All

    We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. -T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
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  12. Barry Eisler _ Winner Take All

    When Mom and Dad die, they're taken care of by strangers in a nursing home two towns over. The kids don't have to see them go. They don't even have to see them after. They just get a "we're sorry to inform you" call late that night from the institution's management, for whom such calls are as routine as putting out the weekly garbage is for a suburban homeowner. The funeral home picks up the body. The cemetery buries it. Unless you're a professional, you might live your whole life without seeing someone in the moment of leaving his own.
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