Lee Child > Quotes

“I don't want to put the world to rights... I just don't like people who put the world to wrongs.”
― Lee Child, 61 Hours

“Don't get it right - get it WRITTEN!”
― 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, Worth Dying For

“Hope for the best, plan for the worst.”
― Lee Child

“Never forgive, never forget. Do it once and do it right. You reap what you sow. Plans go to hell as soon as the first shot is fired. Protect and serve. Never off duty.”
― Lee Child, 61 Hours

“No, I'm a man with a rule. People leave me alone, I leave them alone. If they don't, I don't.”
― Lee Child, Nothing to Lose

“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, Nothing to Lose

“I'm a rich man. To have everything you need is the definition of affluence.”
― Lee Child, Gone Tomorrow

“I'm not a vagrant. I'm a hobo. Big difference.”
― Lee Child, Killing Floor

“I'm not afraid of death. Death's afraid of me.”
― Lee Child, 61 Hours

“I have to warn you. I promised my mother, a long time ago. She said I had to give folks a chance to walk away.”
― Lee Child, Nothing to Lose

“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, Killing Floor

“hit them fast, hit them hard, and hit them a lot”
― Lee Childs

“Now they broke my toothbrush, I don't own anything.”
― Lee Child, Bad Luck and Trouble

“I don't care about the little guy. I just hate the big guy. I hate big smug people who think they can get away with things.”
― Lee Child, Persuader

“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, Die Trying

“The best fights are the ones you don't have", a wise man once said to me.”
― Lee Child, The Affair

“I said nothing. I’m good at saying nothing. I don’t like talking. I could go the rest of my life without saying another word, if I had to.”
― Lee Child, The Affair

“Some old guy once said that the meaning of life is that it ends.”
― Lee Child, A Wanted Man

“Spread love and understanding,” Reacher said. “Use force if necessary.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“I know I'm smarter than an armadillo”
― Lee Child, Echo Burning

“You do not mess with the special investigators.”
― Lee Child, Bad Luck and Trouble

“He had fallen out of the ugly tree, and hit every branch.”
― Lee Child, The Affair

“Slippery slope. I carry a spare shirt, pretty soon I'm carrying spare pants. Then I'd need a suitcase. Next thing I know, I've got a house and a car and a savings plan and I'm filling out all kinds of forms.”
― Lee Child, Bad Luck and Trouble

“To fill a small bag means selecting,and choosing, and evaluating. There's no logicial end to that process. Pretty soon I would have a big bag, and then two or three. A month later I'd be like the rest of you.”
― Lee Child, 61 Hours

“Like when people say they slept like a baby. Do they mean they slept well? Or do they mean they woke up every ten minutes, screaming?”
― Lee Child, Killing Floor

“People, Reacher was certain about. Dogs were different. People had freedom of choice. If a man or a woman ran snarling toward him, they did so because they chose to. They were asking for whatever they got. His response was their problem. But dogs were different. No free will. Easily misled. It raised an ethical problem. Shooting a dog because it had been induced to do something unwise was not the sort of thing Reacher wanted to do.”
― Lee Child, Die Trying

“Enough, a person might say, if that person lived in the civilized world, the world of movies and television and fair play and decent restraint. But Reacher didn’t live there. He lived in a world where you don’t start fights but you sure as hell finish them, and you don’t lose them either, and he was the inheritor of generations of hard-won wisdom that said the best way to lose them was to assume they were over when they weren’t yet.”
― Lee Child, Worth Dying For

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
― Lee Child, The Affair

“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, Worth Dying For