179 Quotes by James Clavell

I’ve set myself against the sea all my life and I’ve always won. I always will.

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.

The earth’s round, like an orange, but this map is like its skin, cut off in ovals, north to south, laid flat and stretched a bit at the top and bottom. A Dutchman called Mercator invented the way to do this accurately twenty years ago. It’s the first accurate world map.

Godrot opium, he thought. But he knew that his life was inexorably tied to opium – and that without it neither The Noble House nor the British Empire could exist.

You should talk to Ian about Cuba, old chap, that really gets him going. He says, and I agree, you lost. The Soviets sucked you into another trap. A fool’s mate. He believes they built their sites almost openly – wanting you to detect them and you did and then there was a lot of saber-rattling, the whole world’s frightened to death, and in exchange for the Soviet agreement to take the missiles out of Cuba your President tore up your Monroe Doctrine, the cornerstone of your whole security system.

Isn’t it only laughter we can stay human?

A lot of bull that’s worshipped as the be-all and end-all of existence. So much of ‘normal, civilized’ life is bull that you can’t imagine it. For us ex-Changi-ites – we’re lucky, we’re cleansed, we know what life is really all about. What frightens you, doesn’t frighten me, what frightens me, you’d laugh at.

I prefer the mist that surrounds me. Yes, I don’t like a lot of what I see nowadays.

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.