Quotes from Lee Child

I've got everything I need. That's the definition of affluence.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Reacher

Rule two: watch his eyes. If they stayed up, he was going to swing. If they dropped down, he was going to kick.

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.

If somebody's got money outside of his salary, it shows up somewhere.

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.

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.

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.

Staring isn't difficult. I can do it all day long. Without blinking, if I want to, which is sometimes painful, but always useful. The trick is to not really look at them, but to focus ten yards beyond, on nothing, which produces a glassy effect, which makes them worry, mostly about what's going on behind your empty eyes.

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.

People live, and then they die, and as long as they do both things properly, there's nothing much to regret.

the only way to keep fear and panic at bay was to concentrate ruthlessly on the job at hand.

Civilian notions about unreasonable search and seizure and warrants and probable cause stop at an army post main gate.

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.

Foreign, for sure. But we all bleed the same color red. No doubt about that. The truth of that statement was plain to see. Reacher put the guy out of misery. A single shot, close range, behind the ear. An unnecessary round expended, but good manners had a price

a yard and left, Dave," he said. O'Donnell was like a blind man. His eyes were tight on the two guys

The sort of wallet that molds itself tight around the stuff crammed inside.

For real? That's kind of creepy." Reacher said, "I know. And I'm real

Law and order are everywhere the law and order which protect the established hierarchy.

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.

old enough to show some mileage, young enough to still find some amusement in the world.

You're a hard man, Reacher," she said. He was quiet in turn. "I think I'm a realistic man," he said. "And a decent enough guy, all told." "You may find normal people don't agree." He nodded. "A lot of you don't," he said.

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.

When did you last see him?" "About twenty minutes ago," I said. "In the morgue." Finlay nodded gently. "Before that?" "Seven years ago," I said. "Our mother's funeral.