A wise man prepares for treachery.
They’re wise in China. There the first of a dynasty’s always a peasant or the son of a peasant, and the throne’s always taken by force with bloody hands. No hereditary caste there – isn’t that China’s strength?
A fine moon rode the sky and he could see the dark marks on its face and he wondered absently if the dark was land and the rest ice and snow, and why the moon was there, and who lived there.
An army of helpers for the twenty-eight cooks were preparing the meats and vegetables, plucking chickens, killing fresh fish and lobsters and crabs and cleaning them, doing the thousand tasks that Chinese food requires – as each dish is cooked freshly for each customer.
They’re devils who pretend to serve the Church and Christ, but they serve only themselves. They lust for power, power at any cost. They hide behind a net of poverty and piousness, but underneath, they feed like kings and amass fortunes.
Their souls touch and I seem to be more aware of God because of it.
Let’s compete freely. Goddam tariffs! Free trade and free seas – that’s what’s right!
You can find friends in manure, sometimes, my son.
Oh, yes. Every year in this Land of the Gods we have earth tremors. And fires and flood and Great Waves, and the monster storms – the tai-funs. Nature is very strong with us.’ Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. ‘Perhaps that is why we love life so much, Anjin-san. You see, we have to. Death is part of our air and sea and earth. You should know, Anjin-san, in this Land of Tears, death is our heritage.
The British. We have proved beyond all doubt we’re to be trusted, we can govern, and, by and large, our bureaucracy’s incorruptible.
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.
Why should we fight them when their own greed and stupidity’s destroying them. Eh?
Perhaps that is why we love life so much, Anjin-san. You see, we have to. Death is part of our air and see and earth.
Israel was a Stalin-Beria coup of monumental proportions! Who helped it, overt and covert, come into being? Who gave it immediate recognition? We did, and why?” Suslev belched again, “To cement into the guts of Arabia a perpetual cancer that will suppurate and destroy both sides and, along with them, bring down the industrial might of the West. Jew against Mohammedan against Christian.
Secrets never leave you in peace, however much you wish or pray.
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.
Only a real man has the right to stand at the pinnacle.
Fallibility in a leader is very trying. Isn’t it? They spill so much of other people’s blood.
We in the KGB are like Japanese in that we too agree the only sin is failure.
There can only be one Tai-Pan.