“Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him.”

Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

“The reality of living was never greater than when you held death clutched tightly in your hands.”

Harold Robbins, Stiletto

“In darkness there is sin; in darkness there is death. Sin negates spirit; and the killing of beings without spirit can only be looked on as an act of charity.”

Eric Van Lustbader, The Ninja

“Leadership is the quality of telling people what they want to hear.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“You stand for something. I stand for something. Just being on this planet, wearing the clothes we wear, doing the work we do, we each stand for something.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“It means the Japanese are exquisitely sensitive to the group. More than anything, they are attuned to getting along with the group. It means not standing out, not taking a chance, not being too individualistic. It also means not necessarily insisting on truth. The Japanese have very little faith in truth. It strikes them as cold and abstract. It’s like a mother whose son is accused of a crime. She doesn’t care much about the truth. She cares more about her son. The same with the Japanese. To the Japanese, the important thing is relationship between people. That’s the real truth. The factual truth is unimportant.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“It took a long time to understand that Japanese behavior is based on values of a farm village. You hear a lot about samurai and feudalism, but deep down, the Japanese are farmers. And if you lived in a farm village and you displeased the other villagers, you were banished. And that meant you died, because no other village would take in a troublemaker. So. Displease the group and you die. That’s the way they see it.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“The Japanese are masters of indirect action. It’s their instinctual way to proceed. If someone in Japan is unhappy with you, they never tell you to your face. They tell your friend, your associate, your boss. In such a way the words gets back. The Japanese have all these ways of indirect communication. That’s why they socialize so much, play so much golf, go drinking in karaoke bars. They need these extra channels of communication because they can’t come out and say what’s on their minds. It’s tremendously inefficient, when you think about it. Wasteful of time and money. But since they cannot confront – because confrontation is almost like death, it makes them sweat and panic – they have no other choice. Japan is the land of the end run. They never go up the middle… So behavior that seems sneaky and cowardly to Americans is just standard operating procedure to Japanese.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“The Japanese are masters of the smear job.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“In the last twenty years, Japan cut the energy cost of finished goods by sixty percent. America has done nothing. Japan can now make goods cheaper than we can, because Japan has pushed investment in energy-efficient technology. Conservation is competitive.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“Basically, the Japanese have an understanding based on centuries of shared culture, and they are able to communicate feelings without words. It’s the closeness that exists in America between a parent and child – a child often understands everything, just from a parent’s glance. But Americans don’t rely on unspoken communication as a general rule, and the Japanese do. It is as if all Japanese are members of the same family, and they can communicate without words. To a Japanese, silences have meaning.’

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“Relationships are your source of information, your safety valve, and your early warning system. In the Japanese way of seeing the world.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“The Japanese can be tough. They say ‘business is war,’ and they mean it. You know how Japan is always telling us that their markets are open. Well, in the old days, if a Japanese bought an American car, he got audited by the government. So pretty soon, nobody bought an American car. The officials shrug: what can they do? Their market is open: they can’t help it if nobody wants an American car. The obstructions are endless. Every imported car has to be individually tested on the dock to make sure it complies with exhaust-emission law. Foreign drugs can only be tested in Japanese laboratories on Japanese nationals. Foreign skis were once banned because Japanese snow was said to be wetter than European and American snow.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“Because in Japan, scandal is the most common way of revising the pecking order. Of getting rid of a powerful opponent. It’s a routine procedure over there. You uncover a vulnerability, and you leak it to the press, or to government investigators. A scandal inevitably follows, and the person or organization is ruined.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“Everyone’s building walls and hiring guards. But in Japan, you can walk into a park at midnight and sit on a bench and nothing will happen to you. You’re completely safe, day or night. You can go anywhere. You won’t be robbed or beaten or killed. You’re not always looking behind you, not always worrying. You don’t need walls and bodyguards. Your safety is the safety of the whole society. You’re free. It’s a wonderful feeling. “

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“Remember, Japan has never accepted Freud and Christianity. They’ve never been guilty or embarrassed about sex. No problem with homosexuality, no problem with kinky sex. Just matter-of-fact. Some people like it a certain way, so some people do it that way, what the hell. The Japanese can’t understand why we get so worked up about a straightforward bodily function. They think we’re a little screwed up on the subject of sex. And they have a point.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“All’s fair in love and war, and the Japanese see business as war. Bribery is fine, if you can manage it.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“In American organizations it’s all about who fucked up. Whose head will roll. In Japanese organizations it’s about what’s fucked up, and how to fix it. Nobody gets blamed. Their way is better.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“Everything works in Japan. In a Tokyo train station, you can stand at a market spot on the platform and when the train stops, the doors will open right in front of you. Trains are on time. Bags are not lost. Connections are not missed. Deadlines are met. Things happen as planned. The Japanese are educated, prepared, and motivated. They get things done. There’s no screwing around.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun

“Compared to the Japanese, we [Americans] are incompetent. In Japan, every criminal gets caught. For major crimes, convictions run ninety-nine percent. So any criminal in Japan knows from the outset he is going to get caught. But here, the conviction rate is more like seventeen percent. Not even one in five. So a criminal in the States knows he probably isn’t going to get caught – and if he’s caught, he won’t be convicted, thanks to all his legal safeguards.”

Michael Crichton, Rising Sun