Lee Child Quotes

The key to thrillers is vicarious pleasure.

All of us write wish fulfillment.

The way to write a thriller is to ask a question at the beginning, and answer it at the end.

I'd never believed in luck. Never had any cause to. Never relied on it, because I never could.

I know I'm smarter than an armadillo

British crime stories tend to be very internal, psychological, claustrophobic, very limited in terms of geography.

I think my books come out very visual, which is an obvious consequence.

The most sustained feat of imagination in mystery fiction today.

I don't know what the secret is when I am writing it - it really is a surprise to me.

I don't need validation, recognition or praise. What I need are facts and the facts are that one of my books gets sold, somewhere in the world, every second.

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.

You see something scary, you should stand up and step toward it, not away from it. Instinctively, reflexively, in a raging fury.

I love visiting LA. It's an endlessly fascinating city, and is, of course, America's entertainment capital. Each time I go, I fall in love with it all over again. That said, it's not the sort of place I'd want to live.

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.

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.

Spread love and understanding,” Reacher said. “Use force if necessary.

Many years from now when your children ask what New York City was like just after 9/11, this will be the book you give them in response. It's an exquisite novel full of heart, soul, passion and intelligence, and it's the one this great New York author was born to write.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

Never forget a Favor, Never forgive a Slight!

The best fights are the ones you don't have", a wise man once said to me.

I had a brief theater background and loved the backstage world there's more backstage work in television, so I saw a job advertised and applied, and got it. That was back in 1977, when getting jobs was easy.

Imagine the uproar if the Federal government tried to make everyone wear a radio transmitter around their neck so we can keep track of their movements. But people happily carry their cell phones in their purses and pockets.

Hit them fast, hit them hard, and hit them a lot.

Intensely vivid characters, terrible crimes, and a brutal deep-frozen landscape all prove beyond a reasonable doubt that cold nurtures good and evil as readily as heat ... and that Giles Blunt is a really tremendous crime novelist.

I have a kind of old-fashioned, artisan approach.

I'm a rich man. To have everything you need is the definition of affluence.

Lone women shouldn't stop in the middle of nowhere for giant unkempt strangers with duct tape on their faces.

The British regulatory system was revised, so that bigger profits were encouraged, which removed the option of big spending on programming. Quality just fell off a cliff, and all the old hands either left or were fired for being too expensive.

I always wanted to be in the world of entertainment. I just love the idea of an audience being happy with what I am doing. Writing is showbusiness for shy people. That's how I see it.

I like food, like any other guy, but it is not the main thing in my life. I can do without it.

I do a little fact checking now and then. Other than that its impact is simply that email has revolutionized communication for me, and my website has built up a community of readers, which is a lot of fun.

The thriller is not a recent invention. It probably goes back to the dawn of storytelling.

The first day of the rest of my life.

Some old guy once said that the meaning of life is that it ends.

I'd been a thriller reader all my life.

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.

Full of thrills and tension - but smart and human too.

That should be your town motto. It's all I ever hear. Like: New Hampshire, Live Free or Die. It should be: Despair, You Need To Leave Now.

Most actors are small, anyway - at least compared to me.

I'm not a vagrant... I'm a hobo. Big difference.

Practically any Western has a homesteader in trouble, and a mysterious rider shows up off the range, solves the problem over two or three days, and then rides off into the sunset.

I don't want to put the world to rights... I just don't like people who put the world to wrongs.

I've discovered writers by reading books left in airplane seats and weird hotels.

It's always sad if anybody you know has a personal problem.

LA has a fantastic car scene and because the climate is so gentle, cars can last forever.

I need a stimulating environment to write because my books are driven at 100 miles per hour at a time.

He had fallen out of the ugly tree, and hit every branch.

I wanted readers to be genuinely unsure as to whether she's telling the truth or lying. It meant making her partly sympathetic, and partly unsympathetic, which wasn't easy.