Lee Child Quotes

61 Sourced Quotes

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 try not to look at my writing near bedtime, because it will fire my brain up.

Lee Child
What I really love is a winter Sunday when it has snowed overnight. You get that special quality of light, and you get the silence because there's no traffic. You have that paralyzed feeling that's always fun for a while.

Lee Child
The first day is always the best, because you haven't screwed anything up yet. It's a gorgeous feeling.

Lee Child
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
Remember, I'm not making this up. Reacher is real. He exists. This is what he is up to, right now. That's why I can't change anything — this is just the way it is.

Lee Child
Spread love and understanding, Reacher said. Use force if necessary.

Lee Child
I like to know things. I'm hungry for knowledge.

Lee Child
Suicide bombers are easy to spot. They give out all kinds of telltale signs. Mostly because they're nervous. By definition they're all first-timers.

Lee Child
The two men walked on and stopped eight feet in front of him and faced him head-on. Reacher flexed his fingers by his side, to test how cold they were. Eight feet was an interesting choice of distance. It meant they were going to talk before they tangled. He flexed his toes and ran some muscle tension up through his calves, his thighs, his back, his shoulders. Moved his head side to side and then back a little, to loosen his neck. He breathed in through his nose. The wind was on his back. The guy on the left took his hands out of his pockets. No gloves. And either he had bad arthritis or he was holding rolls of quarters in both palms.

Lee Child
You have to ration your opponents' victories. You have to mete them out, slowly and meanly. You have to make your opponents subliminally grateful for every little bit of compliance. That way you get away with giving up ten small losses a day, rather than ten big ones.

Lee Child
Reacher hated turning back. He liked to press on, dead ahead, whatever. Everyone's life needed an organizing principle, and relentless forward motion was Reacher's.

Lee Child
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
Overwhelming force indiscriminately applied, not giving up on it well after he was sure no more was required.

Lee Child
Here is the fundamental reality about the writing business. It's lonely. You spend all your time writing and then wondering whether what you just wrote is any good.

Lee Child
Friday. Five o'clock in the afternoon. Maybe the hardest time to move unobserved through a city. Or, maybe the easiest. Because at five o'clock on a Friday nobody pays attention to anything. Except the road ahead.

Lee Child
The beginning of a new book feels like stepping off a cliff into the abyss. A long free-fall. One of these days I'm going to end up flat on my face. Or not, as the case may be.

Lee Child
Long experience had taught me that absolute silence is the best way. Say something, and it can be misheard. Misunderstood. Misinterpreted. It can get you convicted. It can get you killed. Silence upsets the arresting officer. He has to tell you silence is your right but he hates it if you exercise that right. I was being arrested for murder. But I said nothing.

Lee Child
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
He picked up the wrench and broke the guy's wrist with it, one, and then the other wrist, two, and turned back and did the same to the guy who had held the hammer, three, four. The two men were somebody's weapons, consciously deployed, and no soldier left an enemy's abandoned ordnance on the field in working order. The doctor's wife was watching from the cabin door, all kinds of terror in her face. "What?" Reacher asked her.

Lee Child
The cop climbed out of his car exactly four minutes before he got shot. He moved like he knew his fate in advance.

Lee Child
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
He looked at the pain and he set himself apart from it. He saw it, examined it, identified it, corralled it. He isolated it. He challenged it. You against me? Dream on, pal. He built borders for it. Then walls. He built walls and forced the pain behind them and then he moved the walls inward, compressing the pain, crushing it, boxing it in, limiting it, beating it.

Lee Child
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. You would mark those numbers on the play card. And you would win... Same for killing people.

Lee Child
I thought: should I be worried? I was under arrest. In a town where I'd never been before. Apparently for murder. But I knew two things. First, they couldn't prove something had happened if it hadn't happened. And second, I hadn't killed anybody. Not in their town, and not for a long time, anyway.

Lee Child
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
The guy that was standing said, "We don't want you here."
Reacher said, "You're confusing me with someone who gives a shit what you want."
"You won't get served in here."
"Won't I?"
"Not a hope."
"You could order for me."
"And then what?"
"Then I could eat your lunch."

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

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

Lee Child