Lee Child
Lee Child, is a British author who writes thriller novels, and is best known for his Jack Reacher novel series. (Lee Child Quotes)
“A brave woman is one who stands up when she hears gunshots. She doesn’t dive under the desk.”
Lee Child
Jack Reacher’s Rules
“A child uncertain of its birth date is a classic symptom of dysfunction within a family.”
Lee Child
Past Tense
“A crowd two hundred strong was the largest animal on the face of the earth. The heaviest, the hardest to control, the hardest to stop. The hardest to kill. Big targets, but after-action reports always showed that crowds took much less than one casualty per round fired.”
Lee Child
Nothing to Lose
“A good coat is like a good lawyer. It covers your ass.”
Lee Child
Without Fail
“A handgun at two hundred feet is the same thing as crossing your fingers and making a wish.”
Lee Child
A Wanted Man
“A lesson learned long ago: the human brain was much more sensitive to side-to-side displacement than front-to-back. An evolutionary quirk, presumably, like most things.”
Lee Child
Never Go Back
“A little bit, I guess. But for me it’s mostly the eyes. Either there’s someone home or there isn’t. Either you want to knock on that door or you don’t.”
Lee Child
The Midnight Line
“A mile from the bus route Muller met Dremmler in a pastry shop. It had four small tables, all of them occupied by pairs of men just like themselves, friends but not really, bound together only by a proposition, be it buying or selling or hedging or insuring, or investing or leasing or renting or flipping. Or making a stand against crumbling national identity.”
Lee Child
Night School
“A military policeman deals with military lawbreakers. Those lawbreakers are service guys. Highly trained in weapons, sabotage, unarmed combat. Rangers, Green Berets, marines. Not just killers. Trained killers. Extremely well trained, at huge public expense. So the military policeman is trained even better. Better with weapons. Better unarmed.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“A person either runs or he fights. It’s a binary choice, and I’m a fighter.”
Lee Child
Never Go Back
“A person less fortunate than yourself deserves the best you can give. Because of duty, and honor, and service. You understand those words? You should do your job right, and you should do it well, simply because you can, without looking for notice or reward.”
Lee Child
Nothing to Lose
“A soldier knows that a satisfactory observation point provides an unobstructed view to the front and adequate security to the flanks and the rear. He knows it provides protection from the elements and concealment of the observers. He knows it offers a reasonable likelihood of undisturbed occupation for the full duration of the operation.”
Lee Child
The Hard Way
“A square lot covering four acres was about a hundred and forty yards on a side. Homes on the left and the right of the street put number twenty-five about twelve lots out from town. About a mile, maybe.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“A visitor from outer space would assume the viability of the United States depended entirely on the ability of the citizenry to carry eight-by-four sheets of board, safely and in vast quantities.”
Lee Child
Never Go Back
“After the apology the narrative cut to the then-current chase, which seemed to be equal parts political, legal, and deranged.”
Lee Child
Past Tense
“Afterward Reacher conceded that if a guy his own age had said it, he would have hit him right away, bang, before the last word had even died away to silence, because why let a guy who wants to start a fight do so on his own schedule? But this was a kid, and compassion demanded at least one do-over.”
Lee Child
Night School
“Afterward the last one looked best off. He was still moving. So Reacher stepped down and kicked him in the head. Just once. The irreducible number. But hard. To discourage further participation. Then the lobby door opened and Brenda Amos walked in.”
Lee Child
Past Tense
“Aim for the side of the skull, which is softer and displaces the brain more.”
Lee Child
Jack Reacher’s Rules
“Alaska Airlines would have been cheaper, but Reacher hated Alaska Airlines. They put a scripture card on their meal trays. Ruined his appetite.”
Lee Child
Bad Luck and Trouble
“All in the Cyrillic alphabet. Named for Saint Cyril, who worked on alphabets in the ninth century.”
Lee Child
Blue Moon
“All talking in a tense and agitated fashion, like a scene in a movie where folks find out the mining company has poisoned their water.”
Lee Child
No Middle Name
“Always love or money. And it can’t be love, because love makes you crazy, and this guy isn’t crazy.”
Lee Child
Running Blind
“An obscure cousin with no known antecedents. A blank space on the family tree.”
Lee Child
Past Tense
“An under-window HVAC unit could be opened up, and nine times out of ten there was a plastic pocket expressly designed to hold paperwork, often an instruction manual or a warranty card, among which an enterprising person could conceal dozens of pages.”
Lee Child
Make Me
“And no soldier does more than he has to. No soldier ever has, since Alexander the Great first put his army together. Initiative in the ranks usually ends in tears. Especially where live ammunition is involved. And civilians.”
Lee Child
The Affair
“And training has a purpose. It takes people who aren’t necessarily very smart and it makes them seem smart by beating some basic tactical awareness into them. Until it becomes instinctive.”
Lee Child
One Shot
“And watched the truck squeal away, each tire insisting the other three were wrong.”
Lee Child
Past Tense
“Anecdotally his fitness reports rated him well above average in the classroom, excellent in the field, fluently bilingual in English and French, passable in Spanish, outstanding on all man-portable weaponry, and beyond outstanding at hand-to-hand combat. Susan knew what that last rating meant. Like having a running chainsaw thrown at you”
Lee Child
61 Hours
“As a rule, the Bureau and the military don’t get along too well.” “Well, there’s a big surprise. Who the hell do you guys get along with?”
Lee Child
Running Blind
“At one point they said they were heading to”
Lee Child
A Wanted Man
“Attacking me was like pushing open a forbidden door. What waited on the other side was his problem.”
Lee Child
Jack Reacher’s Rules
“Audibility decays according to the inverse square law. Twice the distance, the sound gets four times as quiet. Four times the distance, sixteen times as quiet.” (Lee Child Quotes)
Lee Child
The Hard Way
“Because all those places have got stuff that we want. There’s oil, and diamonds, and uranium. Alcoa needs tin and bauxite and copper. Halliburton wants to get in there and make a buck. Corporations from Texas want to get in there and run those same damn jails.”
Lee Child
The Hard Way
“Because deep down to the army a wounded soldier that can’t fight anymore is garbage. So we depend on civilians, and civilians don’t care either.”
Lee Child
Nothing to Lose
“Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in his shoes. Then when you start criticizing him, you’re a mile away and he’s got to run after you in his socks.” – Jack Reacher”
Lee Child
Gone Tomorrow
“Being dumb wasn’t a capital crime. Wasn’t a crime at all, in fact. Merely a handicap.”
Lee Child
The Midnight Line
“Below the glass would be the weak spot. Plywood, probably, maybe three-eighths thick, painted, retained in the frame by quarter-round moldings. Reacher was wearing shoes he had bought in the London airport two deployments ago, stout British things with welts and toecaps as hard as steel.”
Lee Child
High Heat
“Both of them had noses like spoiled eggplants. Both of them had two black eyes. Both of them had crusted blood on their lips. Neither one of them”
Lee Child
The Affair
“Both were military. That was clear.Reacher could tell by their haircuts. No civilian barber would be as pragmatic or as brutal.”
Lee Child
Never Go Back
“But the kid could think, too. He wasn’t academic like Joe, but he was practical. His IQ was probably about the same, but it was a get-the-job-done type of street smart IQ, not any kind of for-the-sake-of-it cerebral indulgence. Reacher liked facts, for sure, and information too, but not theory. He was a real-world character. Stan had no idea what the future held for the guy. No idea at all, except he was going to be too big to fit inside a tank or an airplane cockpit. So it was going to have to be something else.”
Lee Child
Second Son
“But this guy was five years too old for that. And behind his greeting he had a proprietorial air. He was saying welcome, for sure, but to my house. Like he owned the place.”
Lee Child
Past Tense
“But we’re all still KGB really. Old wine, new bottles.”
Lee Child
Personal
“But you think it because you don’t trust your colleagues. Not all of them. You don’t believe in them. Which leaves you isolated. It’s all down to you. But the army is different. Whatever else is wrong with it, you can trust your brother soldiers. And believe in them.”
Lee Child
Personal
“But, you know, nobody lives forever. Conceptually these things don’t come as a surprise.”
Lee Child
The Enemy
“Canada’s army is three men and a dog. They probably keep their stuff forever.”
Lee Child
Nothing to Lose
“Certain it is that many of his stern deeds were for the right as he understood that right to be.”
Lee Child
Echo Burning
“Civilian notions about unreasonable search and seizure and warrants and probable cause stop at an army post main gate.”
Lee Child
The Enemy
“Clicked the cocking handle to the fire position and closed her hand around the grip.”
Lee Child
Die Trying
“Combat is about time and space and opposing forces. Like a huge four-dimensional diagram. First step is to misinform the enemy. Let him think your diagram is a completely different shape. You assume all communications are penetrated, and then you use them to spread lies and deceit. You buy yourself an advantage.”
Lee Child
Tripwire
“Cops are the same the world over. Once they commit to a position in public they never back down. Trying to make them is a waste of time. Reacher knew that from personal experience. But still, there are standards to uphold.”
Lee Child
The Sentinel
“Dealing with morons … is like teaching Hindu to a beagle.”
Lee Child
Jack Reacher’s Rules
“Delta is full of guys who can stay awake for a week and walk a hundred miles and shoot the balls off a tsetse fly, but it’s relatively empty of guys who can do all that and then tell you the difference between a Shiite and a trip to the latrine.”
Lee Child
Gone Tomorrow
“Difference between the men and the boys is the price of their toys?”
Lee Child
Tripwire
“Do it once and do it right and do it quickly”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“Don’t aim for the middle of the body, which is easier to defend; aim high for the head or low for the knees.”
Lee Child
Jack Reacher’s Rules
“Don’t let ego get in the way of a good decision.” “You just trashed every general in our nation’s history.”
Lee Child
Past Tense
“Don’t underestimate the attraction of your ass, Roscoe, whatever you do.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“Don’t worry about why it went wrong. Just damn well put it right.”
Lee Child
Jack Reacher’s Rules
“Don’t worry about why it went wrong. Just damn well put it right.”
Lee Child
Tripwire
“Drivers hit their horns in anticipation of potential fractional delays.”
Lee Child
The Hard Way
“Each of which was no doubt occupied by a made man with a gun in his pocket and a spare in a drawer.”
Lee Child
Blue Moon
“Echo was a young girl in love with Narcissus. But he loved himself, not her, so she pined away until just her voice was left.”
Lee Child
Echo Burning
“Either way Reacher figured he might as well find out. He had no place to go, and all the time in the world to get there, so detours cost him nothing.”
Lee Child
Make Me
“Enough, a person might say, if that person lived in the civilized world, the world of movies and television and fair play and decent restraint. But Reacher didn’t live there. He lived in a world where you don’t start fights but you sure as hell finish them, and you don’t lose them either, and he was the inheritor of generations of hard-won wisdom that said the best way to lose them was to assume they were over when they weren’t yet.”
Lee Child
Worth Dying For
“Evaluate. Long experience had taught me to evaluate and assess. When the unexpected gets dumped on you, don’t waste time. Don’t figure out how or why it happened. Don’t recriminate. Don’t figure out whose fault it is. Don’t work out how to avoid the same mistake next time. All of that you do later. If you survive.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“Eventually he was led to a small hot room. The air was full of flies, moving slowly. Two men sat on pillows, both bearded, one short and fat, the other tall and lean. Both were in plain white robes and plain white turbans.”
Lee Child
Night School
“Every island he had ever been on had a garbage problem.”
Lee Child
No Middle Name
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
Lee Child
The Affair
“Evidently the Albanian guy thought the same way. His right hand snaked into view and gripped the stair rail. No gun. His left hand followed. No gun. But they were big hands. Smooth and hard, broad and discolored, thick blunt fingers, with what looked like a manicure done by a steak mallet.”
Lee Child
Blue Moon
“Facts were to be faced, not fought.”
Lee Child
Bad Luck and Trouble
“Fatherhood was up there as one of the most commonplace male experiences in all of human history. But to Reacher it had always seemed unlikely. Just purely theoretical. Like winning the Nobel Prize, or playing in the World Series, or being able to sing. Possible in principle, but always likely to pass him by. A destination for other people, but not for him.”
Lee Child
Never Go Back
“Fatherhood. Always unlikely. Like winning the Nobel Prize, or playing in the World Series. Not for him.”
Lee Child
Never Go Back
“Fiction comprises stories about things that never happened to people who didn’t exist.”
Lee Child
The Hero
“First you spend a lot of time and money making the grass grow, just so you can spend a lot of time and money cutting it down again a little while later.”
Lee Child
Tripwire
“Firstly, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I run my diner. That’s it. Period, full stop. I have nothing else going on the side. And secondly, even if I did, what have you got that I could possibly want?”
Lee Child
The Sentinel
“For a military cop, walking into a bar is like a batter stepping to the plate.”
Lee Child
Echo Burning
“For every year humans had been modern, they had been primitive for seven hundred more, which left a residue, and by then the back part of my brain was firmly in charge – My tribe needs you gone, pal. And you’re ugly, too. And you’re a pussy.” (Lee Child Quotes)
Lee Child
Personal
“For real? That’s kind of creepy.” Reacher said, “I know. And I’m real”
Lee Child
High Heat
“Forty thousand suicides every year in America. One every thirteen minutes. Statistically we’re more likely to kill ourselves than each other. Who knew?”
Lee Child
Make Me
“Generally I avoid having things to do. Clearly a reaction against literal regimentation earlier in my life. The result is I have no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there.”
Lee Child
Blue Moon
“Gravity only, into the length of hose that lay on the floor at a lower level than the tank itself. For the rest, the pump would have to prime itself and then suck hard and haul it all up and out.”
Lee Child
61 Hours
“Handguns were in-room weapons. Under expert control in high-pressure situations the average range for a successful engagement was about eleven feet.”
Lee Child
Bad Luck and Trouble
“He believed that anything could be reverse-engineered. If one human or group of humans put something together, then another human or group of humans could take it apart again. It was a basic principle. All that was required was empathy and thought and imagination. And he liked pressure. He liked deadlines. He liked a short and finite time to crack a problem. He liked a quiet space to work in. And he liked a similar mind to work with.”
Lee Child
The Hard Way
“He drew back the string an extra inch. The arrowhead moved backward, the same inch, toward his hand, clenched tight around the grip. The bow curved harder. It sang with tension.”
Lee Child
Past Tense
“He finished his story with a little facial shrug, part Yankee modesty, part genuine perplexity. As in, how did that happen?”
Lee Child
Past Tense
“He found people respond to crises in two ways. Some get to work fixing the problem. Others, proving the problem wasn’t their fault. Reacher liked the first kind. Rutherford seemed like the first kind. It was nice to see someone not dumping on him for a change.”
Lee Child
The Sentinel
“He had crashed through the barrier. He had stopped worrying and started relaxing. He was up on that plateau where you just did whatever needed doing. I knew that place. I lived there.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“He had fallen out of the ugly tree, and hit every branch.”
Lee Child
The Affair
“He had learned a long time ago that some things were worth being afraid of. And some things were not. Things that he had done before and survived did not justify fear. To be afraid of a survivable thing was irrational. And whatever else he was, Reacher knew he was a rational man.”
Lee Child
Die Trying
“He had no bag, which was strange. But overall it was vaguely reassuring to have such a man on board, especially after he had proved himself civilized and not in any way threatening. Threatening behavior from a man that size would have been unseemly. Good manners from a man that size were charming.”
Lee Child
61 Hours
“He had no place to go, and all the time in the world to get there, so detours cost him nothing.”
Lee Child
Make Me
“He had seen the herd instinct at work, the anonymity, the removal of inhibition, the implied permissions of collective action. He had seen that an angry crowd was the most dangerous animal on the face of the earth.”
Lee Child
Nothing to Lose
“He liked fiction better than fact, because fact often wasn’t. Like most people he knew a couple of things for sure, up close and eyeballed, and when he saw them in books they were wrong. So he liked made-up stories better, because everyone knew where they were from the get-go. He wasn’t strict about genre. Either shit happened, or it didn’t.”
Lee Child
Make Me
“He liked the electric darkness and the hot dirty air and the blasts of noise and traffic and the manic barking sirens and the crush of people. It helped a lonely man feel connected and isolated both at the same time.”
Lee Child
The Hard Way
“He looked at them and wondered if they were the fools, or if he was.”
Lee Child
Tripwire
“He looked tired and preoccupied, and beset by problems, and a little wistful, like a guy more content with the past than the present, but also temporarily happy, because he had been handed a simple problem that could be easily solved.”
Lee Child
61 Hours
“He said all that needs to happen for evil to prevail is that good men do nothing.”
Lee Child
The Affair
“He was a man of strong convictions. Some of them were offensive and all of them were erroneous.”
Lee Child
Night School
“He was with a woman in a thousand-dollar dress, and between them they acted out all kinds of dissatisfied body language, telegraphing it, semaphoring it, huffing and puffing, getting more and more exaggerated, until even the doorman noticed.”
Lee Child
Blue Moon
“He went in, to a reception desk that could have been in a hip museum or at an upscale dentist’s. Behind it was a guy who looked like he was stationed there as a punishment. Reacher said hello. The guy looked up but didn’t answer. Reacher told him he wanted to see two sets of old census records.”
Lee Child
Past Tense
“He’s worth having. All I got was two fake lawsuits.” “Seems like Morgan’s value just went down, as part of a credible”
Lee Child
Never Go Back
“Her eyes were green, and they were warm and liquid with some kind of deep, dreamy satisfaction. There was sparkle, muted, like winking sunlight on a woodland stream. And bitter amusement. She was mocking him, and herself, and the whole wide world.”
Lee Child
The Midnight Line
“Her eyes were like a welcome blast of sunshine on a rotten afternoon.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“His eyes were closed, which made it not much of a fair fight, but those are always my favorite kind.”
Lee Child
Jack Reacher’s Rules
“His name had been Jason Kenneth Rickard, and he had finished his earthly sojourn a month shy of his twenty-ninth birthday.”
Lee Child
Never Go Back
“Hope for the best, plan for the worst.”
Lee Child
Echo Burning
“Hopeless is hopeless, and don’t ever pretend it ain’t”
Lee Child
Tripwire
“Human motivation is very complex. Most people don’t really know why they do things.”
Lee Child
One Shot
“I applied what the unofficial Humvee manual called 2-40 air-conditioning, which meant you opened two windows and drove at forty miles an hour.”
Lee Child
The Enemy
“I can’t worry about something I can’t change.”
Lee Child
Running Blind
“I checked my appearance, to make sure I was fit for public consumption.”
Lee Child
Personal
“I could tell you, but then I’d have to bill you.”
Lee Child
The Midnight Line
“I counted off seventy-two seconds, which represents a mile at fifty miles an hour.”
Lee Child
Persuader
“I don’t really care about the little guy. I just hate the big guy. I hate big smug people who think they can get away with things.”
Lee Child
Persuader
“I don’t see how his welfare suddenly becomes my responsibility, just because he chose to attack my welfare first.”
Lee Child
Blue Moon
“I don’t want to put the world to rights… I just don’t like people who put the world to wrongs.”
Lee Child
61 Hours
“I felt like a man who wakes alone on a deserted island to find that the rest of the world has stolen away in boats in the night. I felt like I was standing on a shore, watching small receding shapes on the horizon. I felt like I had been speaking English, and now I realized everyone else had been speaking a different language entirely. The world was changing. And I didn’t want it to.”
Lee Child
The Enemy
“I felt like someone else. I felt like a normal person. But I got over it.”
Lee Child
Make Me
“I had a teacher once, grade school somewhere. Philippines, I think, because she always wore a big white hat. So it was somewhere hot. I was always twice the size of the other kids, and she used to say to me: count to ten before you get mad, Reacher. And I’ve counted way past ten on this one. Way past.” (Lee Child Quotes)
Lee Child
Die Trying
“I had to decide how to use that pressure. I had to decide whether it was going to crush me or turn me into a diamond.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“I have to warn you. I promised my mother, a long time ago. She said I had to give folks a chance to walk away.”
Lee Child
Nothing to Lose
“I know I’m smarter than an armadillo”
Lee Child
Echo Burning
“I left them there in the office and walked back to the entrance. Pushed the door open and stepped”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“I said nothing. I’m good at saying nothing. I don’t like talking. I could go the rest of my life without saying another word, if I had to.”
Lee Child
The Affair
“I took my right hand off the wheel and reverse-punched him square between the eyes. It was a good solid smack. It put him right back to sleep. Manual anesthetic. He stayed out all the way back to the post.”
Lee Child
The Enemy
“I try to do the right thing. Even though everybody hates us and nobody helps us and nobody thanks us afterward. I think doing the right thing is an end in itself. It has to be, really, doesn’t it?”
Lee Child
Persuader
“I want you to swallow your tongue. I want you to just gulp it down, real sudden, like it was an oyster.”
Lee Child
Running Blind
“I wanted miles to travel and absolutely no idea where I was going.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“I was in the machine. My whole life. Then the machine coughed and spat me out. So I thought, OK, if I’m out, I’m out. All the way out. I was a little angry and it was probably an immature reaction. But I got used to it.”
Lee Child
One Shot
“I went to college. West Point is technically a college.”
Lee Child
One Shot
“I worked thirteen years, got me nowhere. I feel like I tried it their way, and to hell with them. Now I’m going to try it my way.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“I’d lost something I never knew I’d had.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“I’m going to twist his arm out of his shoulder socket and beat him to death with his own right hand.”
Lee Child
Personal
“I’m not much to talk about. What you see is what you get.”
Lee Child
The Hard Way
“I’m saying a scattergun approach will always look good, as long as you put the spotlight on the successes and sweep the failures under the rug.”
Lee Child
Running Blind
“I’ve got everything I need. That’s the definition of affluence.”
Lee Child
Worth Dying For
“I’d never believed in luck. Never had any cause to. Never relied on it, because I never could.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“If I visit and he doesn’t know I’ve visited, have I really visited at all? It’s self-indulgent to come here just to make myself feel like a good wife.”
Lee Child
Nothing to Lose
“If I wanted easy I would have joined the Marines.”
Lee Child
Blue Moon
“If in doubt, say nothing.”
Lee Child
Jack Reacher’s Rules
“If somebody’s got money outside of his salary, it shows up somewhere.”
Lee Child
Jack Reacher’s Rules
“If you can see a bandwagon, it’s too late to get on.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“If you can’t acquaint an opponent with reason, you must acquaint his head with the sidewalk.”
Lee Child
Never Go Back
“If you hear hoof beats, you look for horses, not zebras.”
Lee Child
The Midnight Line
“I’m a rich man. To have everything you need is the definition of affluence.”
Lee Child
Gone Tomorrow
“I’m not a vagrant. I’m a hobo. Big difference.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“I’m not afraid of death. Death’s afraid of me.”
Lee Child
61 Hours
“I’m twenty-nine, yes really, I’m from Aspen, Colorado, I’m six feet one, yes really, I’ve been at Quantico two years, yes I date guys, no I dress like this just because I like it, no I’m not married, no I don’t currently have a boyfriend, and no I don’t want to have dinner with you tonight.”
Lee Child
Running Blind
“Imagine the uproar if the Federal government tried to make everyone wear a radio transmitter around their neck so we can keep track of their movements. But people happily carry their cell phones in their purses and pockets.”
Lee Child
A Wanted Man
“In order to win, you must be prepared to lose.”
Lee Child
Jack Reacher’s Rules
“In principle the most vulnerable, but he wasn’t worried. Sheer rage would overcome any theoretical tactical disadvantage.”
Lee Child
61 Hours
“In the record. People would quickly forget our reason”
Lee Child
Deep Down
“It had been everything he had dreamed it would be, multiplied by a million. She wasn’t a myth. She was a living breathing creature, hard and strong and sinewy and perfumed, warm and shy and giving.”
Lee Child
Tripwire
“It had maroon paint and exposed brick and scarred wood, and a chalkboard menu about ninety percent full of things that don’t really belong in coffee, like dairy products of various types and temperatures, and weird nut-based flavorings, and many other assorted pollutants.”
Lee Child
Never Go Back
“It helped a lonely man feel connected and isolated both at the same time.”
Lee Child
The Hard Way
“It was a solid punch, and a lucky one. But not for him. It crushed his larynx. He went down on the floor again and suffocated. It was reasonably quick. About a minute and a half. There was nothing I could do for him. I’m not a doctor.”
Lee Child
Persuader
“It’s been running for years. On social media. Conspiracy theories. Attempts to undermine the mainstream media.”
Lee Child
The Sentinel
“It’s like walking out of a movie. Being made to walk out of a movie that you’re really enjoying. That’s what worried me about it. I would never know how it turned out.”
Lee Child
The Enemy
“It’s something they teach you in the army. The only thing under your direct control is how hard you work. In other words, if you really, really buckle down today, and you get the intelligence, the planning, and the execution each a hundred percent exactly correct, then you are bound to prevail.” “Sounds empowering.” “It’s the army. What they really mean is, if you fail today, it’s completely your own fault.”
Lee Child
Blue Moon
“Jodie didn’t need it explained to her that her father had been one of the good guys. She knew. She was moving with the serenity of a person who had loved the old guy all her life, and had been loved back. There was nothing she had neglected to tell him, nothing he had neglected to tell her. People live, and then they die, and as long as they do both things properly, there’s nothing much to regret.”
Lee Child
Tripwire
“Keeping your mouth shut is a devastating weapon. Your silence will make your opponent want to babble.”
Lee Child
Jack Reacher’s Rules
“Law and order are everywhere the law and order which protect the established hierarchy.”
Lee Child
Echo Burning
“Learned a long time ago that some things were worth being afraid of. And some things were not. Things that he had done before and survived did not justify fear. To be afraid of a survivable thing was irrational.”
Lee Child
Die Trying
“Life is endlessly capable of surprises, so he knew one day he would come face to face with his physical equal. With somebody who might worry him. But he looked and saw this wasn’t the day. So he just smiled and looked away again.”
Lee Child
Echo Burning
“Like they were puppets, and the puppeteer had sneezed.”
Lee Child
Never Go Back
“Like when people say they slept like a baby. Do they mean they slept well? Or do they mean they woke up every ten minutes, screaming?”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“London has a quarter of the whole world’s supply of closed circuit cameras, all in one city.”
Lee Child
Personal
“Lone women shouldn’t stop in the middle of nowhere for giant unkempt strangers with duct tape on their faces.”
Lee Child
Worth Dying For
“Look on the bright side,” Dixon said. “Maybe you gave the guy a concussion. Maybe he doesn’t remember who he is, let alone who you are.”
Lee Child
Bad Luck and Trouble
“Look, don’t see, listen, don’t hear. The more you engage, the longer you survive.”
Lee Child
Gone Tomorrow
“My country, right or wrong. Which means nothing, unless you admit your country is wrong sometimes. Loving a country that was right all the time would be common sense, not patriotism.”
Lee Child
Night School
“My name is Jack Reacher, and once I was a military cop, with heavy emphasis on the past tense. I have been out nearly as long as I was in. But old habits die hard. I had stepped into the bar the same way I always step anywhere, which is carefully.”
Lee Child
No Middle Name
“My only problem was making a living. How to make a living without giving up the freedom was not an easy trick.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“My rule of thumb is those kind of questions are best answered afterward. Experience beats conjecture every time.”
Lee Child
Night School
“Neagley pivoted around the jamb and ducked inside. Reacher followed. Long training. Smallest first, biggest last. That way both parties got an unobstructed view. And the bigger party didn’t get accidentally shot in the back.”
Lee Child
Night School
“Never count on anything except surprise and unpredictability and danger. Ring doorbells with your knuckles or elbows to avoid leaving fingerprints.”
Lee Child
Jack Reacher’s Rules
“Never forgive, never forget. Do it once and do it right. You reap what you sow. Plans go to hell as soon as the first shot is fired. Protect and serve. Never off duty.”
Lee Child
61 Hours
“Never hit a woman unless she’s trying to kill you.”
Lee Child
Jack Reacher’s Rules
“Never revive a guy who had just pulled a gun on you.”
Lee Child
Worth Dying For
“Ninety percent of asking questions is about listening to answers.”
Lee Child
Persuader
“No one expects a head butt. Humans don’t hit things with their heads. Some inbuilt atavistic instinct says so. A head butt changes the game. It adds a kind of unhinged savagery to the mix. An unprovoked head butt is like bringing a sawed-off shotgun to a knife fight.”
Lee Child
The Affair
“No one talked, but they all said plenty.”
Lee Child
Personal
“No particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there.”
Lee Child
Blue Moon
“No, I’m a man with a rule. People leave me alone, I leave them alone. If they don’t, I don’t.”
Lee Child
Nothing to Lose
“No. My situation is not the same at all. It’s like the difference between being alone and being lonely. Two separate, distinct things.”
Lee Child
The Sentinel
“Nothing ever works like you predict it. All plans fall apart as soon as the first shot is fired.”
Lee Child
Persuader
“Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Not even a click or a whir or a cough. Turning the key was the same thing as not turning it. Inert. Dead as a doornail. Dead as the deadest thing that ever died.” (Lee Child Quotes)
Lee Child
Past Tense
“Now they broke my toothbrush, I don’t own anything.”
Lee Child
Bad Luck and Trouble
“Old enough to show some mileage, young enough to still find some amusement in the world.”
Lee Child
The Affair
“Old Laurent Moutier was gone, at the age of ninety, taking with him like everyone does a lifetime of unknown private hopes and dreams and fears and experiences, and leaving behind him like most people do a thin trace of himself in his living descendants”
Lee Child
No Middle Name
“One day it seemed like a good idea, the next day it didn’t. That kind of thing happened all the time, way back when, because strategy was fluid. Or because nobody had the faintest idea what they were doing.”
Lee Child
61 Hours
“One hundred and eighty minutes, not a second more, not a second less. Time and tide wait for no man. The Navy was built on all kinds of bullshit like that.”
Lee Child
Running Blind
“Only a fool would be dishonest about that could be disproved in a matter of seconds.”
Lee Child
The Sentinel
“Or the Russians could have had some kind of tripwire in place. Something to alert them if anyone was close to finding whatever they wanted to keep hidden. They’re not reckless. They’d know that one document sitting unnoticed amongst how many—thousands? millions?—in a dusty old archive would attract less attention than a fire.”
Lee Child
The Sentinel
“People live, and then they die, and as long as they do both things properly, there’s nothing much to regret.”
Lee Child
Tripwire
“People say that knowledge is power. The more knowledge, the more power. Suppose you knew the winning numbers for the lottery? All of them? Not guessed them, not dreamed them, but really knew them? What would you do? You would run to the store, is what. You would mark those numbers on the playslip. And you would win.”
Lee Child
Running Blind
“People spend thousands of dollars on stereos. Sometimes tens of thousands. There is a specialist industry right here in the States which builds stereo gear to a standard you wouldn’t believe. Tubed amplifiers which cost more than a house. Speakers taller than me. Cables thicker than a garden hose. Some army guys had that stuff. I’d heard it on bases around the world. Wonderful. But they were wasting their money. Because the best stereo in the world is free. Inside your head. It sounds as good as you want it to. As loud as you want it to be.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“People that thin are usually rich. We live in strange times. Poor people are fat, and rich people are thin.”
Lee Child
Make Me
“People who wear glasses, without them they always look unfocused, vulnerable. Out in the open. A layer removed.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“People, Reacher was certain about. Dogs were different. People had freedom of choice. If a man or a woman ran snarling toward him, they did so because they chose to. They were asking for whatever they got. His response was their problem. But dogs were different. No free will. Easily misled. It raised an ethical problem. Shooting a dog because it had been induced to do something unwise was not the sort of thing Reacher wanted to do.”
Lee Child
Die Trying
“Problem shared is a problem halved.”
Lee Child
Without Fail
“Reacher defaulted to his instinctive position, which was to hope for the best, but plan for the worst.”
Lee Child
No Middle Name
“Reacher had no patience for people who claimed that y was a vowel.”
Lee Child
A Wanted Man
“Reacher knew people with houses. He had talked to them, with the same kind of detached interest he would talk to a person who kept snakes as pets or entered ballroom dancing competitions.”
Lee Child
Tripwire
“Reacher liked New York more than most places. He liked the casual indifference of it all and the frantic hustle and the total anonymity.”
Lee Child
The Hard Way
“Reacher said nothing. We can’t fight thirty people. To which Reacher’s natural response was: Why the hell not?”
Lee Child
Make Me
“Reacher said, “So here’s the thing Brett. Either you take your hand off my chest, or I’ll take it off your wrist.”
Lee Child
Worth Dying For
“Reacher smiled. Bad luck and trouble, been my only friends.”
Lee Child
Echo Burning
“Reacher thanked the guy for the ride, and got out, and watched the truck squeal away, each tire insisting the other three were wrong.”
Lee Child
Past Tense
“Reacher took another step. Now he was seven feet away. Now they were in an intimate little cluster. No other cars in sight. The wheat moved slowly, in waves, like an immense golden sea.”
Lee Child
Make Me
“Reacher’s personal rule of thumb was never to revive a guy who had just pulled a gun on him. He was fairly inflexible on the matter.”
Lee Child
Worth Dying For
“Revising objectives is smart because it stops you throwing good money after bad.”
Lee Child
Persuader
“Serried ranks of bottles. A mirror like this, you could see”
Lee Child
Good and Valuable Consideration
“Seventeen rounds to a magazine, hence the name.”
Lee Child
Die Trying
“She closed her eyes and opened them a moment later, like she was erasing the conversation from her memory.”
Lee Child
The Enemy
“She didn’t talk. She was thinking. She often was. He knew the signs. He guessed she was processing the information she had received, examining it, turning it this way and that, until she was satisfied.”
Lee Child
Past Tense
“She had all the right parts in all the right proportions.”
Lee Child
The Affair
“She had used a simile, to explain and flatter and apologize all at once. She had written, “You’re like New York City. I love to visit, but I could never live there.”
Lee Child
The Midnight Line
“She just went into her bag for her keys and got out of the car and skipped straight across the sidewalk and into the coffee shop.”
Lee Child
Tripwire
“She moved silently over the thick corridor carpet. The hinge side of the door was closest, and the knob side farthest. She ducked under the peephole’s field of view and flattened against the wall beyond the door. She reached out and tried the knob backhand. Long training. Always safer. Guns can shoot through doors.”
Lee Child
Night School
“She nodded a greeting and took a muffin and a cup of coffee. Then she left again. I took two muffins and an empty cup and a whole box of coffee. I figured I could prop it on the edge of the conference table with the spigot facing toward me. Refills as and when required. Like an alcoholic behind a bar.”
Lee Child
Personal
“She tinged her attitude with a gentle mocking humor which saved people from hating her.”
Lee Child
Die Trying
“She zoomed in as close as she could but there still wasn’t much to see. Just an expanse of flat, scorched grass on the far side of a row of trees. The kind of field you might keep a donkey in if you didn’t like it very much.”
Lee Child
The Sentinel
“Short of a shotgun, a pool cue is the best barroom weapon ever invented. Short enough to be handy, long enough to be useful, made out of fine hardwood and nicely weighted with lead.”
Lee Child
Echo Burning
“Slippery slope. I carry a spare shirt, pretty soon I’m carrying spare pants. Then I’d need a suitcase. Next thing I know, I’ve got a house and a car and a savings plan and I’m filling out all kinds of forms.”
Lee Child
Bad Luck and Trouble
“Smoke alarms are compulsory in homes because they contain cameras and microphones wirelessly linked to the government. With poison gas capsules too, in case the government doesn’t like what you’re saying or doing.”
Lee Child
Make Me
“So he died, because for a split-second he got brave. But not then. He died much later, after the split-second of bravery had faded into long hours of wretched gasping fear, and after the long hours of fear had exploded into long minutes of insane screaming panic.”
Lee Child
Die Trying
“So I got desperate. I was really panicking. Then I got this idea. I figured if I looked at people hitching rides, I might find somebody. One of them might turn out to be the right type of person, and willing to help me. I tried to choose pretty carefully. I only stopped for rough-looking men.”
Lee Child
Echo Burning
“So like I said, what are you running from?” “From being like people, I guess.”
Lee Child
Bad Luck and Trouble
“Socratic, they call it in college. All kinds of back and forth, designed to elicit truths implicitly known by all rational beings.”
Lee Child
Personal
“Some kind of internecine conflict, over the spoils.”
Lee Child
Personal
“Some officers of his acquaintance had barked and yelled and shouted. He had always found it more effective to speak low and quiet, enunciating clearly and precisely as if to an idiot child, bearing down with an icy stare. That way he had found the implied menace to be unmistakable.”
Lee Child
Nothing to Lose
“Some old guy once said that the meaning of life is that it ends.”
Lee Child
A Wanted Man
“Sometimes if you want to know for sure whether the stove is hot, the only way to find out is to touch it.”
Lee Child
The Affair
“Sooner or later you ended up an orphan. There was no escaping it.”
Lee Child
The Enemy
“Spread love and understanding,” Reacher said. “Use force if necessary.”
Lee Child
Never Go Back
“Street-fighting’s first rule: there are no rules.”
Lee Child
Good and Valuable Consideration
“Surprise was always good. Delay was always fatal. Guys who let a situation unfold in its own good time were just stockpiling problems for themselves.”
Lee Child
High Heat
“Surprise was always good. Delay was always fatal. Guys who let a situation unfold in its own good time were just stockpiling problems for themselves.”
Lee Child
No Middle Name
“That kid was every kind of bully. He had a grudge against anyone with one brain cell more. Which was a lot”
Lee Child
Past Tense
“That should be your town motto. It’s all I ever hear. Like: New Hampshire, Live Free or Die. It should be: Despair, You Need to Leave Now.”
Lee Child
Nothing to Lose
“That’s your call. My philosophy is hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.”
Lee Child
The Sentinel
“The adjustment process wasn’t made any easier by the response he received from the other patrons. Everyone was pleased to see him. He felt like a magnet with the right polarity.”
Lee Child
The Sentinel
“The basis of any scam is telling people what they want to hear. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
Lee Child
Jack Reacher’s Rules
“The best defense against knives was distance. The best countermove was entanglement.”
Lee Child
Nothing to Lose
“The best fights are the ones you don’t have”, a wise man once said to me.”
Lee Child
The Affair
“The big guys like Google weren’t always big. Once they were two kids in a garage. Or a dorm room. Some of them set out to be billionaires from the get-go, but some of them didn’t. Some of them got just caught up in solving an interesting problem, which happened to be worth billions later.”
Lee Child
Make Me
“The chief of detectives was not thrilled to get it. Not at first. He got more excited later. His name was Griezman. He was considered successful. His department’s ninety-percent record was impressive.”
Lee Child
Night School
“The day guy was an aquiline black man about seven feet tall, but slender as a pencil, folded into a desk chair that was far too small for him.”
Lee Child
Never Go Back
“The driver saw Reacher emerge. He hit a button to open the trunk, climbed out, and walked stiffly to the rear of the car. He’d be in his mid- to late fifties, Reacher thought, with silver hair buzzed short and the tanned, leathery skin of a guy who spent plenty of time outdoors. He wasn’t tall—maybe five-ten at most—and he was wearing pale chinos and a white shirt. The shirt was tight across his shoulders, and also around his gut. It was like he’d once been in shape but was struggling to stay that way and wasn’t ready to admit he might not make it. He looked at Reacher and sneered, making plain his displeasure at the prospect of someone so unkempt being allowed to travel in his pristine vehicle.”
Lee Child
The Sentinel
“The driver was closer, which was good, because he had seemed to be the take-charge guy. The senior figure. He would have the key. In his suit coat pocket, probably. On the left. Because he was right-handed. He would have held his gun in his right and blipped the fob with his left.”
Lee Child
Blue Moon
“The existing social order is a swindle and its cherished beliefs mostly delusions.”
Lee Child
One Shot
“The first sheet was an analysis of the problems that Armored was facing. The integrated units, the loss of prestige. The possibility of ceding command to others. It was gloomy, but it was conventional. And it was accurate, according to the Chief of Staff.”
Lee Child
The Enemy
“The fittest guy he had ever known was a Belgian soldier who swore the key to fitness was to do whatever the hell you liked as long as you drank five litres of mineral water every day.”
Lee Child
Tripwire
“The grounds had an iron fence set in a stone knee wall, which was just wide enough for a small person to sit on, and Turner was a small person, and Reacher was used to being uncomfortable.”
Lee Child
Never Go Back
“The gunsmoke whipped away in the wind and the sudden noise faded and the jet whine came back, low and steady.”
Lee Child
61 Hours
“The guy froze for an imperceptible period, just a blink of time, thinking as fast as he was about to act, and then he swooped down, twisting, his right hand whipping through a long arc, aiming to snatch up the gun and grab it tight and whirl it away to safety.”
Lee Child
Blue Moon
“The guy offered his left fist. Reacher bumped it with his right, behind DeLong’s back. Not the first time his knuckles had touched a Sox fan, but by far the gentlest.”
Lee Child
Good and Valuable Consideration
“The guy said nothing in reply to that, and Reacher stepped back and closed the door on him. Chang said, “If our aim is to get out of here alive, I don’t think you should be antagonizing them.”
Lee Child
Make Me
“The guy stood a yard inside the dark room and waited, blinking, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom after the hot whiteness of the Key West sun. It was June, dead-on four o’clock in the afternoon, the southernmost part of the United States. Way farther south than most of the Bahamas. A hot white sun and a fierce temperature. Reacher sat at his table in back and sipped water from a plastic bottle and waited.”
Lee Child
Tripwire
“The guy who was standing said, “We don’t want you here.” Reacher said, “You’re confusing me with someone who gives a shit what you want.”
Lee Child
Nothing to Lose
“The live guy had suspiciously little in his pockets. And what he had was a little suspicious.”
Lee Child
Personal
“The Marines might grab you first. Fate worse than death.”
Lee Child
The Affair
“The missing guy got back from the restroom. He stood behind Reacher’s chair, arms spread wide in exaggerated perplexity. As if to say, what the hell is going on here? Who is this guy? Reacher kept one eye on Jimmy Rat, and one on the window alongside him, where he could see a faint ghostly reflection of what was happening behind his shoulder.”
Lee Child
The Midnight Line
“The most unbearable type of anger is a woman’s—do anything to avoid it.”
Lee Child
Jack Reacher’s Rules
“The officers shook hands, and the sniper gave a millimetric nod, which Reacher returned, equally briefly, which for two alleged snipers was effusive, and for a dogface and a jarhead meeting for the first time was practically like rolling around on the floor in an ecstatic bear hug.”
Lee Child
Deep Down
“The only opponents Reacher truly feared were small whippy guys with fast hands and sharp blades.”
Lee Child
Nothing to Lose
“The open! So go for it! Jump on it! Just gobble it right up! “I don’t know,” he said. “We need to talk about it,” she said. But there was no more talking to be done, not then, because the buzzer from the lobby started up an insistent squawk, like somebody was down there on the street leaning on the button. Jodie stood”
Lee Child
Running Blind
“The other thing I remember from the chemistry lab is stuff about pressure. Pressure turns coal into diamonds. Pressure does things.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“The pilot was military, so he was using the rudder. Civilian pilots avoid using the rudder. Using the rudder makes the plane slew, like a car skids. Passengers don’t like the feeling. So civilian pilots turn by juicing the engines on one side and backing off on the others. Then the plane comes around smoothly.”
Lee Child
Running Blind
“The plane was on descent. Reacher could feel it in his ears. And he could feel abrupt turns. The pilot was military, so he was using the rudder. Civilian pilots avoid using the rudder. Using the rudder makes the plane slew, like a car skids. Passengers don’t like the feeling. So civilian pilots turn by juicing the engines on one side and backing off on the others. Then the plane comes around smoothly. But military pilots don’t care about their passengers’ comfort. It’s not like they’ve bought tickets.”
Lee Child
Running Blind
“The problem with getting your rights abused was that somebody had to witness it for it to mean anything. Somebody had to see it happen.”
Lee Child
Running Blind
“The Python was a double-action weapon, which meant the same trigger pull cocked the hammer and then dropped it, so he started early, getting the cylinder turning while the gun was still moving, seeing the hammer come up, feeling the cams and the levers, waiting, then firing, trusting millisecond timing and momentum and deflection and complex four-dimensional calculations.”
Lee Child
Make Me
“The range had been exceptional. An apartment balcony fourteen hundred yards away had been identified as the rifleman’s hide. Fourteen hundred yards is more than three-quarters of a mile. The French president had been at an open-air podium behind”
Lee Child
Never Go Back
“The Reacher brothers’ need for caffeine makes heroin addiction look like an amusing little take-it-or-leave-it sideline.”
Lee Child
The Enemy
“The shop across the light from the pay phone was representative. It had maroon paint and exposed brick and scarred wood, and a chalkboard menu about ninety percent full of things that don’t really belong in coffee, like dairy products of various types and temperatures, and weird nut-based flavorings, and many other assorted pollutants.”
Lee Child
Personal
“The smart money brings a gun to a knife fight. Reacher brought a hydrogen bomb.”
Lee Child
Second Son
“The sort of wallet that molds itself tight around the stuff crammed inside.”
Lee Child
Tripwire
“The tall one sets the strategy, and the fat one works the angles.”
Lee Child
Night School
“The third guy was different. He was what you got when you ate squirrels for four generations. Smarter than a rat and tougher than a goat, and jumpier than either one.”
Lee Child
The Affair
“The traffic rolled on, but strangely, always moving but very slowly, as if every driver was a movie guy shooting a scene in slow motion.”
Lee Child
Never Go Back
“The unit had organized itself like a small-market baseball team enjoying an unlikely pennant run: talented journeymen working together, no stars, no egos, mutually supportive, and above all ruthlessly and relentlessly effective.” (Lee Child Quotes)
Lee Child
Bad Luck and Trouble
“The west end guy peeled away from his window and started walking. Heading east. Fifteen feet behind Rutherford. Moving with loose, rangy ease. He was clearly having to shorten his stride to avoid overtaking his mark. Ahead of them a woman had stopped at the edge of the sidewalk to tend to a child in a stroller. Beyond her a couple stood, talking. They were dressed for the gym. Just regular folks. Not part of the pattern. Unaware of what was happening.”
Lee Child
The Sentinel
“The whole point of drifting was happy passive acceptance of no alternatives. Having alternatives ruined it.”
Lee Child
Tripwire
“The woman bent decorously at the knees and laid her briefcase and her stack of papers on the floor. Ratcliffe took a step forward and said, “You three were brought here under false pretenses, obviously. But we didn’t want a lot of fanfare. A little misdirection was better. We want to avoid attention, if we can. At least at the beginning.”
Lee Child
Night School
“The Zip Code is about the size of Chicago. With five people. But hey, welcome to Wyoming.”
Lee Child
The Midnight Line
“Then a slow mile later such places started thinning out, in favor of vacant lots and piney woods, and a sense of empty vastness ahead.”
Lee Child
Personal
“Then finally he opened the wrong door, and what came out at him was his problem, not mine.”
Lee Child
Personal
“Then the city went silent and took a breath and shiny darkness owned the streets. That was Reacher’s time. He liked to picture the sleeping people stacked twelve, thirty, fifty stories high, often head to head with perfect strangers on opposite sides of thin apartment walls, deep in slumber, unaware of the tall quiet man striding beneath them in the shadows.”
Lee Child
The Hard Way
“There are only two real people in fiction – the storyteller and the listener”
Lee Child
The Hero
“There was a knock at the door. Neagley herself, Reacher figured, right on cue, checking if Sinclair had killed him yet. Or Bishop, checking if he had killed Sinclair. He opened up, standing to one side, out of the line of fire.”
Lee Child
Night School
“There was nothing in his pockets except paper money and an expired passport and an ATM card and a clip-together toothbrush.”
Lee Child
Nothing to Lose
“There was nothing she had neglected to tell him, nothing he had neglected to tell her. People live, and then they die, and as long as they do both things properly, there’s nothing much to regret.”
Lee Child
Tripwire
“There were button makers, and hat makers, and glove makers, and turpentine farmers, and laborers, and locomotive engineers, and silk spinners, and tin mill workers.”
Lee Child
Past Tense
“There were no explosions. But the brutal calamitous physical noise was maybe worse.”
Lee Child
The Enemy
“There were pictures on the walls, all of them dime-store prints of Jesus. In all of them Jesus had blue eyes and wore pale blue robes and had long blond hair and a neat blond beard. He looked more like a Malibu surfer than a Jew from two thousand years ago.”
Lee Child
Nothing to Lose
“There were two dished metal tables set in the center of the room. They had bright lights above them and noisy drains below. They were surrounded by greengrocer scales hanging on chains ready to weigh excised organs, and by rolling steel carts with empty glass jars ready to receive them, and other carts with rows of knives and saws and shears and pliers lying ready for use on green canvas sheets. The whole place was glazed with white subway tiles and the air was cold and sweet with the smell of formaldehyde.”
Lee Child
The Enemy
“There’s nothing shameful about taking orders from a woman of superior rank.”
Lee Child
Jack Reacher’s Rules
“They all shared Stan’s personal allegiance to the famous old saying: War is not about dying for your country. It’s about making the other guy die for his.”
Lee Child
The Affair
“They found out about him in July and stayed angry all through August. They tried to kill him in September. It was way too soon. They weren’t ready. The attempt was a failure. It could have been a disaster, but it was actually a miracle. Because nobody noticed.”
Lee Child
Without Fail
“They had already decided among themselves to keep it lean. It was felt someone else’s cryptic half-remembered childhood legends would not survive a formal one-against-seven across-the-table grilling. It was felt a casual atmosphere would be more productive. A smaller gathering. Sinclair and Reacher and Neagley had already been chosen ahead of time.”
Lee Child
Night School
“They had come for us in the night. Hey had come expecting a lot of blood. They had come with all their gear. Their rubber overshoes and their nylon bodysuits. Their knives, their hammer, their bag of nails. They had come to do a job on us, like they’d done on Morrison and his wife.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“They looked like a faded billboard for an old-time black and white movie. Some sentimental story. Maybe their mother died young and the old guy raised them all solo. Now they’re grateful. Or now for the first time ever a fractured family is seeing eye to eye, because of a terrible external threat. Some kind of dramatic hokum. They were acting it out.”
Lee Child
Past Tense
“They sleep safely in their beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do them harm.” “You know George Orwell?” Yanni asked.”
Lee Child
One Shot
“They started the hole in the hog pen, which was a permanent disturbance all by itself. Each hog weighed two hundred pounds, and each hog had four feet. The dirt was always chewed up. Nothing to see from the air, not even with a thermal camera. The picture would white out instantly, from the steaming animals themselves, and their steaming piles and pools of waste. Safe enough.”
Lee Child
Make Me
“They taught me that inhibitions would kill me. Hit early, hit hard. Kill with the first blow. Get your retaliation in first. Cheat. The gentlemen who behaved decently weren’t there to train anybody. They were already dead.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“They went in, and the guy behind the counter looked up. He was about forty, tall and well built, not fat but certainly fleshed out, with a full head of hair, and a guileless face.”
Lee Child
Make Me
“They were all in line, single file, like an armada from hell. It was a magnificent sight.”
Lee Child
The Enemy
“They won’t remember. They had an accident. They got all banged up. Their memories will be missing an hour or two. Retrograde amnesia, they call it. Fairly common, after physical trauma. If they don’t die first, that is.”
Lee Child
Blue Moon
“They’re scientists at heart, and scientists generally retain a good-faith interest in facts and the truth. Or at least they retain some kind of innate curiosity. All of which was good, because this guy’s attitude was going to be crucial. He could stay out of our way, or he could sell us out with a single phone call.”
Lee Child
The Enemy
“They’re trying to carve gaps in society that are too big to bridge.”
Lee Child
The Sentinel
“This before. I don’t see how his welfare suddenly becomes my responsibility, just because he chose to attack my welfare first. I’m not clear how that works exactly. They started it. They can’t expect me to provide a health plan.”
Lee Child
Blue Moon
“This gentleman is heading for Mineral County in West Virginia. Near a place called Keyser, not too far from the Maryland line.” Which all meant nothing to Reacher, except that West Virginia sounded one step better than regular Virginia.”
Lee Child
Never Go Back
“This is why we need more women officers. For us it’s enough to win. For you, the other guy has to know he lost.”
Lee Child
Never Go Back
“This was like July 13th, 1943, the pivotal day of the Battle of the Kursk. We were like Alexander Vasilevsky, the Soviet general. If we attacked now, this minute, we had to keep on and on attacking until the enemy was run off his feet and the war was won. If we bogged down or paused for breath even for a second, we would be overrun again.”
Lee Child
The Enemy
“To fill a small bag means selecting, and choosing, and evaluating. There’s no logicial end to that process. Pretty soon I would have a big bag, and then two or three. A month later I’d be like the rest of you.”
Lee Child
61 Hours
“Try to look unimportant. They may be low on ammo.”
Lee Child
Jack Reacher’s Rules
“Two choices, as always: fight or flight. We were on 56th Street’s southern sidewalk. I could have run straight across the road and tried to get away. But Leonid and his pal were probably faster than me. The law of averages. Most humans are faster than me. The old lady in the summer dress was probably faster than me. Her old gray mutt was probably faster than me.”
Lee Child
Gone Tomorrow
“Waiting is a skill like anything else.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“Want to die peacefully in my sleep like Grandpa. Not screaming in terror like his passengers.”
Lee Child
The Midnight Line
“War isn’t about dying for your country. It’s about making the enemy die for his.” Gen. George S. Patton”
Lee Child
Jack Reacher’s Rules
“Waste not, want not, make do and mend, don’t make an exhibition of yourself.”
Lee Child
No Middle Name
“We both sat there mute, as if we were in a no-talking competition and serious about winning.”
Lee Child
Personal
“We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
Lee Child
The Midnight Line
“We crossed the Avenue Bosquet against the light and then we made an arbitrary left into the Rue Jean Nicot. Joe stopped at a tabac and bought cigarettes. I would have smiled if I had been able to. The street was named after the guy who discovered nicotine. (Lee Child Quotes)
Lee Child
The Enemy
“We don’t teach them to fight fair, and we don’t start a fight.”
Lee Child
Jack Reacher’s Rules
“We investigate, we prepare, we execute. We find them, we take them down, and then we piss on their ancestors’ graves.”
Lee Child
Bad Luck and Trouble
“We’re all atheists. You don’t believe in Zeus or Thor or Neptune or Augustus Caesar or Mars or Venus or Sun Ra. You reject a thousand gods. Why should it bother you if someone else rejects a thousand and one?”
Lee Child
Nothing to Lose
“We’re going to beat you so hard your kids will be born dizzy.”
Lee Child
Make Me
“We’ve already got gays in the military. We always have had. World War Two, the Western Allies had fourteen million men in uniform. Any kind of reasonable probability says at least a million of them were gay. And we won that war, as I recall, last time I checked with the history books. We won it big time.”
Lee Child
The Enemy
“Webster lapsed into silence. Started thinking hard. He was a smart enough bureaucrat to know if you can’t beat them, you join them. You force yourself to think like they think.”
Lee Child
Die Trying
“What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. He thought JFK had said it. I thought it was actually Friedrich Nietzsche, and he said destroy, not kill. What doesn’t destroy us makes us stronger.”
Lee Child
Persuader
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
Lee Child
Persuader
“What’s the best place to hide a car? In an airport long-term lot. Like where’s the best place to hide a grain of sand? On the beach”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“When the hole was done they backed the machine up and turned it around and used the front bucket to push Keever into his grave, scraping him, rolling him, covering his body with dirt, until finally it fell over the lip and thumped down into the electric shadows.”
Lee Child
Make Me
“When we found it you said the number would be either the client, or a source of independent corroboration, or a source of further information.”
Lee Child
Make Me
“When you’ve knocked someone unconscious, put him into the recovery position. If you want him to recover.”
Lee Child
Jack Reacher’s Rules
“Where would the American feel dominant? This is a negotiation, we assume. He’d want a psychological advantage. He would want to be comfortable, and he would want the other guy to be uncomfortable.”
Lee Child
Night School
“Where’s your luggage?” “I don’t use any.” “You have no stuff?” “I saw a little book in a store at the airport. Apparently we’re supposed to get rid of whatever doesn’t bring us joy.”
Lee Child
No Middle Name
“Which is what the phrase means these days, I suppose, now that the whole parturition business has been institutionalized.”
Lee Child
Never Go Back
“Without breaking stride Reacher head-butted him full in the face. Left, right, bang. A perfect ten, for style and content, and power and precision.”
Lee Child
No Middle Name
“Women have to work twice as hard, to get half the credit.”
Lee Child
No Middle Name
“You do not mess with the special investigators.”
Lee Child
Bad Luck and Trouble
“You don’t let an armed man ride behind you unless you know him.”
Lee Child
Blue Moon
“You ever notice how the folks who talk loudest about small government always seem to live in the states with the biggest subsidies? Small government would kill them dead.”
Lee Child
The Affair
“You got to imagine your memory is like an old bucket, you know? Once it’s filled up with old stuff there ain’t no way to get new stuff in. No way at all, you understand? So I don’t remember any new stuff because my old bucket is all filled up with old stuff that happened way back. You understand what I’m saying here?”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“You need infinite patience. No use fretting or worrying. You just wait. Doing nothing, thinking nothing, burning no energy. Then you burst into action. After an hour, five hours, a day, a week. Waiting is a skill like anything else.”
Lee Child
Killing Floor
“You produce the right results for the wrong reasons, then.” I nodded. “But I try to do the right thing. I think the reasons don’t really matter. Whatever, I like to see the right thing done.”
Lee Child
Persuader
“You see four guys bunched on a corner waiting for you, you either run like hell in the opposite direction without hesitation, or you keep on walking without slowing down or speeding up or breaking stride…Truth is, it’s smarter to run. The best fight is the one you don’t have. But I have never claimed to be smart. Just obstinate, and occasionally bad-tempered. Some guys kick cats. I keep walking. – Jack Reacher”
Lee Child
Gone Tomorrow
“You tell a lot of lies, Ms. Berenson,” he said. Berenson said nothing. Neagley said, “She’s Human Resources. It’s what they do.”
Lee Child
Bad Luck and Trouble
“You think you’ve been in deep shit before, and then you realise you have absolutely no conception of how deep shit can really be.”
Lee Child
The Hard Way
“You’re not dressed like a Mormon.” “So you go knock on the door. Just in case. If he’s there, tell him you’re a Mormon who is coincidentally also in the snowplow business, and you want to talk to him about insurance against global warming.”
Lee Child
The Midnight Line
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