Quotes from Lee Child

You know where the word shrapnel comes from?" "Where?" "An eighteenth-century British guy named Henry Shrapnel." "Really?" "He was a captain in their artillery for eight years. Then he invented an exploding shell, and they promoted him to major. The Duke of Wellington used the shell in the Peninsular Wars, and at the Battle of Waterloo.

chest, pressing damp cotton against her skin, the ball of his thumb down in her cleavage. Not a tender gesture.

Reacher got to them on the plane. He put them out of action and stole their wallets." "On the plane?" "He broke Lozano's fingers and Baldacci's arms and no one noticed." "That's not possible." "Apparently it is. One against two, on an airplane, with a hundred witnesses. It's a blatant humiliation. And now he's renting cars on our dime? Who does this guy think he is?

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

Admit nothing, even on your deathbed. You might suddenly get better.

If you can't acquaint an opponent with reason, you must acquaint his head with the sidewalk.

Her laugh was great. I wanted to look at her nameplate over her shirt pocket. But I didn't want her to think I was looking at her breasts. I remembered them resting on the edge of the table when she took my photograph. I looked. Nice breasts. Her name was Roscoe. She glanced around quickly and moved closer to the bars. I sipped coffee.

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.

I wish he'd rushed out." "Always a sound policy." "I bet you never did." "More times than I can count. Which is why I'm still here, having dinner with you. The chaotic universe. Darwinism in action.

It is not possible for any thinking person to live in such a society as our own without wanting to change it

She has a caller ID system," Reacher said. "With coordinates. She's probably watching this house right now, on Google Earth." "But it's dark." "Don't ask me how it works." He

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.

We tore each other's clothes off like they were on fire. She was gorgeous. Firm and strong and a shape like a dream. Skin like silk. She pulled me to the floor through bars of hot sunlight from the window. It was frantic. We were rolling and nothing could have stopped us. It was like the end of the world. We shuddered to a stop and lay gasping. We were bathed in sweat. Totally spent.

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.

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.

I'm going to twist his arm out of his shoulder socket and beat him to death with his own right hand.

Searching the Deep Web is technically elegant, but being in it can be unpleasant. It has a bit of everything, but ultimately it's a three-legged stool. A third of it is a vast criminal marketplace, where everything is for sale, from your credit card number to murder. There are auction sites where hit men compete for jobs. Lowest bid wins. There are sites where you can specify how your wife should die, and there are contractors who will give you a custom quote.

Reacher squinted through the glare. They were all looking at him. The sandy guy, Poulton. The woman, Lamarr. The hypertensive, Blake. All three of them from Serial Crimes down in Quantico. Up here to talk to him. Then Deerfield, the New York Bureau chief, a heavyweight. Then the lean guy, Cozo, from Organized Crime, working on the protection rackets. He glanced slowly left to right, and right to left, and finished up back on Deerfield. Then he nodded.

si vis pacem para bellum.

lawn. Yard work summed up the whole futile procedure. 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. You curse about it getting too long, and then you worry about it staying too short and you sprinkle expensive water on it all summer, and expensive chemicals all fall.

he could hear faint sounds from their

There are weird names all over the country. Why single out Mother's Rest, in a nation with towns called Why and Whynot, and Accident and Peculiar, and Santa Claus and No Name, and Boring and Cheesequake, and Truth or Consequences, and Monkeys Eyebrow, and Okay and Ordinary, and Pie Town and Toad Suck and Sweet Lips?

Paris was dark and damp and cold and quiet. Cafés and restaurants had warm lights burning behind closed doors and fogged windows. The streets were wet and lined with small parked cars. The cars were all misted over with nighttime dew. We walked together south and west and crossed the Seine at the Pont de la Concorde. Turned west again along the Quai d'Orsay. The river was dark and sluggish. Nothing was moving on it. The streets were empty. Nobody was out and about.

There was nothing else in Carbone's six-by-eight cell. Nothing significant, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing explanatory. Nothing that revealed his history, his nature, his passions, or his interests. He had lived his life in secret, buttoned down, like his Saturday-night shirts.