Quotes from Lee Child

The best fights are the ones you don't have

I'd lost something I never knew I'd had.

Reacher said nothing.

If you can see a bandwagon, it's too late to get on.

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.

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.

First: Character is king. There are probably fewer than six books every century remembered specifically for their plots. People remember characters. Same with television. Who remembers the Lone Ranger? Everybody. Who remembers any actual Lone Ranger story lines? Nobody.

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

Sometimes if you want to know for sure whether the stove is hot, the only way to find out is to touch it.

But we're all still KGB really. Old wine, new bottles.

There's nothing shameful about taking orders from a woman of superior rank.

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.

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.

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

SVR," he said, which meant Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, which was their foreign intelligence service. Like the CIA, or the DGSE, or MI6 in Britain. Then he said, "But we're all still KGB really. Old wine, new bottles.

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.

Like they were puppets, and the puppeteer had sneezed.

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?

problem shared is a problem halved.

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.

We don't teach them to fight fair, and we don't start a fight.

You tell a lot of lies, Ms. Berenson," he said. Berenson said nothing. Neagley said, "She's Human Resources. It's what they do.

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

We're going to beat you so hard your kids will be born dizzy.