Quotes About Anticipation

Sanderson walked to her starting position, and Reacher went with her. He wanted to know she was still chewing. Or if not, whether that was a good thing or bad. She was still chewing. Doing OK. He hoped she wasn't peaking too early. She had the Ruger Standard. The .22. Two rounds in it. It was all she would take. Bramall had the Colt .45. Three rounds in it. Mackenzie had the empty Springfield. Better than nothing. Like the man said, ninety percent of everything was striking a pose.

I was watching the minute hand, intently. It wasn't moving. I waited. It moved. It jumped ahead six degrees.

It's like walking out of a movie. Being made to walk out of a movie that you're really enjoying. That's what worried me about it. I would never know how it turned out.

There was a knock at the door. Neagley herself, Reacher figured, right on cue, checking if Sinclair had killed him yet. Or Bishop, checking if he had killed Sinclair. He opened up, standing to one side, out of the line of fire. Long

I'd expected four. Five was going to be harder. But more productive.

He said, "Come back," a little louder. She straightened up. He got the impression she was about to puke. He didn't want that. Not all over his good clothes. But he licked her ear one more time

Then he checked his watch and waited for midnight. No way to get there faster. The drivers in three and seven were waiting just like him. They nodded, not exactly friendly, not exactly wary. More like a simple same-boat acknowledgment of life's ups and downs.

G. K. Chesterton once said of Charles Dickens, "Dickens didn't write what people wanted. Dickens wanted what people wanted.

Get your retaliation in first.

He knocked on the door and waited. He counted the seconds in his head. He had knocked on a lot of doors. He knew how it worked. One, they hear the knock, two, they get up off the couch, three, they thread around the clutter, four, they step to the door, five, they open it. The door opened. A guy stood there. On his own, with silence behind him. The

intelligence was logged. Sooner or later something would

shadow. He checked his watch. The bus

Better to hit her now. She thinks her job is done. She's coming down off a high. Her adrenaline is low. She'll be braver in the morning." Bishop

Five minutes to three in the afternoon. Exactly sixty-one hours before it happened. The lawyer drove in and parked in the empty lot. There was an inch of new snow on the ground, so he spent a minute fumbling in the foot well until his overshoes were secure. Then he got out and turned his collar up and walked to the visitors' entrance. There was a bitter wind out of the north. It was thick with fat lazy flakes. There was a storm sixty miles away. The radio had been full of it. The

Reacher defaulted to his instinctive position, which was to hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

for lunch?" Deveraux

signalled to the two guys way in back. Both unlocked their safety harnesses. One crouched forward, avoiding Franz's feet, and held his loose harness tight in one hand and unlatched

would take at least another hour for

IT WAS ANOTHER HOUR BEFORE ANYTHING SHOWED UP.

Drivers hit their horns in anticipation of potential fractional delays.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst. That

You can aim at a duck and get it in your sights, but the duck is always moving. In order to hit the duck, you have to move your gun. But a committee faced with a major decision can't always move as quickly as the events it's trying to respond to. By the time the committee is ready to shoot, the duck has flown away.

You never like it to happen, for something as hopeful and sudden as a January thaw to come to an end, but end it does, and then you want to have some quilts around.

It's possible to perceive what is coming and still be dumbfounded when it happens.