Lee Child Quotes

Reacher said nothing. We can't fight thirty people. To which Reacher's natural response was: Why the hell not? ~ Lee Child

It's always sad if anybody you know has a personal problem. ~ Lee Child

It was an article of faith with NCOs [noncommissioned officers] that they were better than their officers. And they were usually right. Certainly I had been happy with mine. They had done plenty of good work for me. ~ Lee Child

People don't look for complications. You hear hoofbeats, you look for horses, not zebras. ~ Lee Child

I'd never believed in luck. Never had any cause to. Never relied on it, because I never could. ~ Lee Child

She paused, and said, "May I ask you a question?" He said, "Sure." "Are we having dinner?" "That's what it said on the menu. Lunch was different, and this sure ain't breakfast." "No, I mean having dinner, as opposed to grabbing road food." "As in candlelight and piano music?" "Not necessarily." "Violin players and guys selling roses?" "If appropriate." "Like a date?" She said, "Broadly, I suppose." He said, "Honest answer?" "Always." "Suppose we had found Keever yesterday, maybe stepping off the train, or fallen over in a wheat field somewhere, with a sprained ankle, somewhat hungry and thirsty but otherwise OK, then yes, for sure I would have asked you out to dinner, and if you had accepted, then we'd be having that dinner right about now, so I guess this half-qualifies. ~ Lee Child

Many years from now when your children ask what New York City was like just after 9/11, this will be the book you give them in response. It's an exquisite novel full of heart, soul, passion and intelligence, and it's the one this great New York author was born to write. ~ Lee Child

And then there was a long conversation, mostly one-sided, definitely biased toward the LA guy doing all the talking, which Reacher couldn't hear, and Chang's facial expressions could have launched a thousand competing scenarios, so he got no real guidance from her. He had a sense the guy worked hard on one thing after another, episodically. And in great detail. Maybe he was an actor. Or a movie person. The context was unclear. In the end Reacher gave up trying to construct a plausible narrative, and just waited. ~ Lee Child

My mother still calls me Jim and that is about it. Everyone else calls me Lee. My wife calls me whatever. ~ Lee Child

Then eventually Westwood arrived. He looked nothing like Reacher expected, but the reality fit the bill just as well as the preconceptions had. He was an outdoors type, not a lab rat, and sturdy rather than pencil-necked. He looked like a naturalist or an explorer. He had short but unruly hair, fair going gray, and a beard of the same length and color. He was red in the face from sunburn and had squint lines around his eyes. He was forty-five, maybe. He was wearing clothing put together from high-tech fabrics and many zippers, but it was all old and creased. He had hiking boots on his feet, with speckled laces like miniature mountain-climbing ropes. He was toting a canvas bag about as big as a mail carrier's. ~ Lee Child

We both sat there mute, as if we were in a no-talking competition and serious about winning. ~ Lee Child

He hauled the right-hand guy next to the left-hand guy, close together, shoulder to shoulder, and he picked up the heavy box like a strongman in the circus, struggling and tottering, and he took two short steps and dropped it on their heads from waist height.
Chrissie said, "Why did you do that?"
"Rules," Reacher said. "Winning ain't enough. The other guy has to know he lost. ~ Lee Child

Full of thrills and tension - but smart and human too. ~ Lee Child

Reacher prowled the hallway, his gun stiff-armed way out in front of him, his torso jerking violently left and right from the hips, like a crazy disco dance. The house-storming shuffle. ~ Lee Child

An average infantryman records one enemy fatality for every fifteen thousand combat rounds expended. ~ Lee Child

The guy with Bennett let go of his elbow and started patting his pockets. He came out with the switchblade, now closed up again, and a Sig Sauer automatic, a P226, I thought, favored by Special Forces everywhere. ~ Lee Child

They didn't want to take the crew-cab back to town, because they didn't want to sit where those guys had sat, so they rode the backhoe, as before, Westwood driving, Reacher and Chang face to face above his head, but this time on the dirt road. Which was slow, but more comfortable. They parked in the dealer's lot. The salesman came out. The backhoe was examined. It was a little stained by crushed wheat, and a little scratched on the sides. There was a little dirt caked on. And the front bucket had a dimple, where the bullet had struck. Not new anymore. Not exactly. Reacher gave the guy five grand from their leftover money. Easy come, easy go. Then ~ Lee Child

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

We should get a cup of coffee."
Chang said, "I don't understand how you drink so much coffee."
"Law of gravity," Reacher said. "If you tip it up, it comes right out. You can't help but drink it."
"Your heart must be thumping all the time."
"Better than the alternative. ~ Lee Child

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

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

I don't want to put the world to rights ... I just don't like people who put the world to wrongs. ~ Lee Child

The way to write a thriller is to ask a question at the beginning, and answer it at the end. ~ Lee Child

OK," I said. "Forget the whole thing." "Really?" "Orders are orders," I said. "The alternative is anarchy and chaos. ~ Lee Child

It's always tense when you move a character from a book to the screen. Always tense. ~ Lee Child

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

L.A. has a fantastic car scene and because the climate is so gentle, cars can last forever. ~ Lee Child

Someone else knows," I said. "The three most dangerous words in the secrecy business. But there it is. I know, and Ms. Nice knows. Which is why we came back with the RAF. Because where would your plane have landed? Guantanamo, maybe. But it didn't, and we're back in America, free and clear. And we know. I'm sure you could crush Ms. Nice's career, but you'll never find me. I'll always be out there. And you know me, General. You've known me a long time. I don't forgive, and I don't forget. And I won't have to do much. Talking might be enough. Suppose the SVR found out it was you who got Khenkin killed? Some of those IOUs might get canceled. And they might retaliate. Rumors might start, about poor old Tom O'Day, who got so desperate he came up with a cockamamie scheme. ~ Lee Child

Now you had one come back, Harley. ~ Lee Child

[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

You could have been killed." Reacher nodded. "Many times," he said. "But all long ago. Not today. Not by these guys." "You're crazy." "Or competent. ~ Lee Child

Some kind of internecine conflict, over the spoils. ~ Lee Child

you know much about head injuries?'
'only the ones I cause ~ Lee Child

I thought justice ground real slow in Texas." "Only if you plead not guilty. ~ Lee Child

said, "We don't have an armored vehicle. Therefore we're pretty much limited to the doors and the windows." "Which will be wired for alarms." "Which will be redundant. They won't need a bell on the roof to tell them we're there." "Which is where, exactly? In a house with four remaining guards and two world-class killers? Who collectively outnumber us three to one? In a structure much easier to defend than attack?" "Assuming those questions were rhetorical, I think that's a fair summary. ~ Lee Child

And we need this. It could save us a year. Without it all we got is a regular manhunt. For a guy already four months AWOL, with a brand-new foreign passport. Instead of that we could have a Saudi kid in a pink shirt and pointed shoes lead us directly to him. Right here and now. Who wouldn't take that deal? The future means nothing if we don't live to see it." "So you broke the law, but only because you thought you had a good reason. You and everyone else. There are lots of good reasons. Too many good reasons. Which is why we have a special structure, to decide between them, when they compete one against the other. That structure is called the National Security Council. We weigh things up and we judge priorities. You just blew a year's hard work, major. You should resign. Before the after-action report comes out. You'll get a better deal that way." "OK," Reacher said. "I will, if it turns out bad. ~ Lee Child

The Pentagon was built because World War Two was coming, and because World War Two was coming it was built without much steel. Steel was needed elsewhere, as always in wartime. Thus the giant building was a monument to the strength and mass of concrete. So much sand was needed for the mix it was dredged right out of the Potomac River, not far from the rising walls themselves. Nearly a million tons of it. The result was extreme solidity. ~ Lee Child

A calm environment is for after I finish work. ~ Lee Child

hit them fast, hit them hard, and hit them a lot ~ Lee Child

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

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

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

I love Italian food but that's too generic a term for what's available now: you have to narrow it down to Tuscan, Sicilian, and so on. ~ Lee Child

I felt like someone else. I felt like a normal person. But I got over it. ~ Lee Child

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

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

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

I checked my appearance, to make sure I was fit for public consumption. ~ Lee Child

Fence as far as the missing panel. Then he started to run toward it. Then he died. I swung the sap and hit him. But he didn't go ~ Lee Child

Nora Roberts, Stephen King, Lee Child and George R. R. Martin write wildly different books. Their writing, plotting and styles have little or nothing in common. But they all write books and characters that readers find appealing. ~ M.J. Rose

I think we lost Wiley. Somehow he was in a hit-and-run accident about two hours after you and I left. He was driving a car and he hit a bicycle. He was full of champagne, no doubt. A witness described him perfectly. She was shown Helmut Klopp's sketch and made a positive ID. It's all right there in the traffic division's log." "So your guy missed him coming out." "At one point he was talking to a traffic cop. It might have happened then." "But either way you don't know where Wiley is." "Not with an acceptable degree of certainty." "Is that something they teach you to say?" "It sounds sober and mature, and burdened down with technicalities." Reacher ~ Lee Child

Unobtrusive. In no one's way. ~ Lee Child

A good coat is like a good lawyer. it covers your ass. ~ Lee Child

Now they broke my toothbrush, I don't own anything. ~ Lee Child

The guy said, "If you'd taken that punch on the upper arm, you'd expect one hell of a bruise. Which is exactly what you got. Not on the outside. Not enough flesh. The bruise is on the inside. On your brain. With a twin across the hall, because your brain bounced from side to side in your skull like a goldfish in a test tube. What we call coup and contre-coup. ~ Lee Child

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

We need to triage those six hundred places. ~ Lee Child

While Roscoe made cups of coffee for Charlie Hubble and Finlay sat in the rosewood office, ~ Lee Child

Fiction started up, and we started burning brain cells on stories about things that didn't happen to people who didn't exist. Why? The only answer can be that humans deeply, deeply desired it. ~ Lee Child

Never revive a guy who had just pulled a gun on you. ~ Lee Child

I don't 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

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

Chester Stone said nothing. Just stood up and threaded his way by all the furniture and over to the door. Through the reception area and into the corridor and into the elevator. Down eighty-eight floors and back outside, where the bright morning sun hit him in the face like a blow. ~ Lee Child

to Reacher's desk. It said Gunshot victim previously reported was LTC Caroline C. Crawford. DOA inside POV ~ Lee Child

Attacking me was like pushing open a forbidden door. What waited on the other side was his problem. ~ Lee Child

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

Special Forces guys were usually small. They were usually lean, fast, and whippy. Built for endurance and stamina and full of smarts and cunning. Like foxes, not like bears. ~ Lee Child

For me the end of a book is just as exciting as it is for a reader. ~ Lee Child

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

He was answered by a long plastic crackle, not a question, but not an instruction either. Softer in tone. Encouragement, maybe. Or reassurance. The one-eyed guy said, "OK, sure," and hung up. ~ Lee Child

Eventually a guy behind the hog farmer broke ranks, and stepped forward. A pragmatist, clearly. He walked to the car and lifted the hatchback and put the bags inside, one by one, first Keever's, then Chang's. ~ Lee Child

Like an AWOL soldier saying goodbye to his ~ Lee Child

I can't worry about something I can't change. ~ Lee Child

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

Stealthy approaches were hard to make through thigh-high drifts. ~ Lee Child

I'm a rich man. To have everything you need is the definition of affluence. ~ Lee Child

shopping trolleys ~ Lee Child

have gambled and stalled. ~ Lee Child

I'm not really into gourmet food; I'm the kind of guy who just stops by a place that looks good rather than heading for the restaurant of the moment. ~ Lee Child

No one talked, but they all said plenty. ~ Lee Child

Joe stared at him. "You let her do that?" Lamonnier shrugged. An expressive, Gallic shrug, just like my mother's. ~ Lee Child

From inside his room Reacher heard the lawn chair scrape across the blacktop, but he paid no attention. Just a random nighttime sound, nothing dangerous, not a shotgun jacking a round, not the hiss of a blade on a sheath, nothing for his lizard brain to worry about. And the only non-lizard possibilities were a lace-up footstep on the sidewalk outside, and a knock on the door, because the woman from the railroad seemed like a person with a lot of questions, and also some kind of expectation they should be answered. Who are you and why have you come here? ~ Lee Child

She closed her eyes and opened them a moment later, like she was erasing the conversation from her memory. ~ Lee Child

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

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

We investigate, we prepare, we execute. We find them, we take them down, and then we piss on their ancestors' graves. ~ Lee Child

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

Chang asked, "Was that the showbusiness answer?" Reacher ~ Lee Child

There was nothing in the fourth stack. Not even a possible. A hundred and sixty gone by. Neagley slid the final forty into place. Reacher watched Klopp. One card at a time, left thumb and index finger, held easy, not near and not far. Decent vision, with his glasses on. Genuine concentration. Not a bored blank stare or an impatient sneer. A calm focus. He was interrogating the photographs, one by one, point by point. Eyes, cheek bones, mouth. Yes or no. No, ~ Lee Child

The guy said, "We don't know if the somebody is a Chinaman. That information would have helped, I guess. ~ Lee Child

No jokes, no banter. No pre-mission ~ Lee Child

He rolled the bloodied tape into a cylinder ~ Lee Child

You see something scary, you should stand up and step toward it, not away from it. Instinctively, reflexively, in a raging fury. ~ Lee Child

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

The door opened. A guy came in. Busy, bustling, sixty-something, medium size, a gray suit, a tight waistband, a warm and friendly face. Pink and round. Lots of energy, and the start of a smile. A guy who got things done, with a lot of charm. Like a salesman. Something complicated. Like a financial instrument, or a Rolls-Royce automobile. "I'm sorry," the guy said. To Sinclair only. "I didn't know you had company." American. An old-time Yankee accent. No one spoke. Then Sinclair said, "Excuse me. Sergeant Frances Neagley and Major Jack Reacher, U.S. Army, meet Mr. Rob Bishop, CIA head of station at the Hamburg consulate." "I just did a drive-by," Bishop said. "On the parallel street. The kid's bedroom. The lamp has moved in the window. ~ Lee Child

She pressed buttons and waited for answering beeps, and then she said, "I want the personnel jacket for U.S. Army Private First Class Wiley, first name unknown, currently four months absent without leave from an air defense unit in Germany. To me in Hamburg, seriously fast." Then she clicked off. The National Security Council. The keys to the kingdom. There was a knock at the door. For ~ Lee Child

Hence 8197. He liked 97 because it was the largest two-digit prime number, and he loved 81 because it was absolutely the only number out of all the literally infinite possibilities whose square root was also the sum of its digits. Square root of eighty-one was nine, and eight and one made nine. No other nontrivial number in the cosmos had that kind of sweet symmetry. Perfect. ~ Lee Child

agent. My testimony would have been automatically suspect, even years later. I would have been a defense counsel's wet dream. As in, Special Agent, please tell us about the bribe you can't prove you didn't take. So I would have joined ~ Lee Child

Printing currency for foreigners to buy is the best racket a government can get into. ~ Lee Child

Male authors always take care to make their heroes at least one inch taller than they are, and considerably more muscular. Just as female authors give their heroines better hair and slimmer thighs. ~ Lee Child