So easy now that Elder Sister has explained to her what all young girls in houses are taught – that with care and meticulous acting and tears of pretended pain and fear, and the final modest telltale stains cautiously placed, a girl can, if necessary, be virgin ten times for ten different men.

— James Clavell

James Clavell Quotes

Women don’t have wisdom or knowledge in political things.

— James Clavell

It hurts and it costs you. It costs you plenty and the attorneys get most, get a good part and they cleverly fan the fire between you for their own goddamn gain.

— James Clavell

I even heard that part of a very large government loan to South Vietnam was expended on a nonexistent airfield that’s still impenetrable jungle.

— James Clavell

It’s amputate or die. Simple. And when it comes down to it, you can’t die. Not yet. Once you’re born, you are obligated to survive. At all costs.

— James Clavell

A new era requires clear thinking about the meaning of honor.

— James Clavell

It is simple to catch a man, all you need to know is the right bait.

— James Clavell

Kill, torture, burn! Just so long as it’s in the name of God, you’re all right. What a lot of hypocrisy! Don’t give me faith! It’s nothing!

— James Clavell

And yet you have faith in the King,” Father Donovan said quietly.

— James Clavell

Lust is pressing, something must be done about it.

— James Clavell

The talk had turned to business, and in the few short hours she had learned more about Hong Kong techniques than through all the reading she had done. More and more it was clear that unless you were on the inside, real power and real riches would escape you.

— James Clavell

It is sometimes wise to be abstract.

— James Clavell

Remember that fortune and misfortune should be left to heaven and natural law. They are not to be bough by prayer or any cunning device to be thought of by any man or self-styled saint. p848.

— James Clavell

Oh yes,” Dunstan Barre said sadly. “Casey, in war to survive you have to stretch things a bit sometimes. As to trading, Marlowe, I agree, most times you have to equate the problem to the time and place. I thank God I was never caught. Don’t think I’d’ve survived, know I wouldn’t.

— James Clavell

Sometimes full agreements, delicate agreements, should not be reduced into writing.

— James Clavell

Toranaga eased his kimono and loincloth aside, as did Yabu. Together they urinated and mixed their urine and watched it dew the garden below.

— James Clavell

For a woman, old age is never pretty.

— James Clavell

It is not wise to notice another man’s woman.

— James Clavell

You must be patient before you criticize.

— James Clavell

It’s unseemly to criticize without knowledge.

— James Clavell

Leave the problems of God to God and karma to karma. Today you’re here and nothing you can do will change that. Today you’re alive and here and honored, and blessed with good fortune. Look at this sunset, it’s beautiful, neh? This sunset exists. Tomorrow does not exist. There is only now. Please look. It is so beautiful and it will never happen ever again, never, not this sunset, never in all infinity. Lose.

— James Clavell
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