Lee Child Quotes

He looked at the pain and he set himself apart from it. He saw it, examined it, identified it, corralled it. He isolated it. He challenged it. You against me? Dream on, pal. He built borders for it. Then walls. He built walls and forced the pain behind them and then he moved the walls inward, compressing the pain, crushing it, boxing it in, limiting it, beating it.

It gives me some kind of chance to survive the night." "How are those better odds? If you come back with me, you're guaranteed to survive the night." "No," Reacher said. "If I come back with you, I'm guaranteed to die of shame.

I went to college. West Point is technically a college.

I'm opposed to censorship of any kind, especially by government. But it's plain common sense that producers should target their product with some kind of sensitivity.

She's a reflection of my fascination with the diversity of America she's totally normal in New York, but a freak in Texas. There are dozens of such clashes in America.

I'm twenty-nine, yes really, I'm from Aspen, Colorado, I'm six feet one, yes really, I've been at Quantico two years, yes I date guys, no I dress like this just because I like it, no I'm not married, no I don't currently have a boyfriend, and no I don't want to have dinner with you tonight.

I just felt from personal observation that there is nothing more dislocated or alienated than a lifelong military person trying to cope in civilian life. It's like two completely separate planets.

I write in the afternoon, from about 12 until 6 or 7. I use an upstairs room as my office. Once I get going I keep at it, and it usually takes about six months from the first blank screen until 'The End.

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.

Reacher said, "So here's the thing Brett. Either you take your hand off my chest, or I'll take it off your wrist.

People who wear glasses, without them they always look unfocused, vulnerable. Out in the open. A layer removed.

I grew up in Birmingham, where they made useful things and made them well.

Everything you could want - action, suspense, character and setting, all floating on the easy lyricism of a fine writer at the top of his game.

For men, as they get bogged down with responsibilities, commitments, bureaucracy, it is a fantasy just to think of shedding everything literally, walking away with nothing at all, and just hitting the road.

So, how to stay inside the world of entertainment without actually getting another job? I felt the only logical answer was to become a novelist. So I wrote the first book - driven by some very real feelings of desperation - and it worked.

I have three desks. One empty for paperwork, one for the internet and email, and one for the writing computer.

They found out about him in July and stayed angry all through August. They tried to kill him in September. It was way too soon. They weren't ready. The attempt was a failure. It could have been a disaster, but it was actually a miracle. Because nobody noticed.

You do not mess with the special investigators.

I have the "thing" worked out - the trick or the surprise or the pivotal fact. Then I just start somewhere and let the story work itself out.

Now they broke my toothbrush, I don't own anything.

I'm not afraid of death. Death's afraid of me.

What do I miss about the UK? Sadly, almost nothing. Maybe the midnight sun, in June in the north. That's all.

I was in the machine. My whole life. Then the machine coughed and spat me out. So I thought, OK, if I'm out, I'm out. All the way out. I was a little angry and it was probably an immature reaction. But I got used to it.

People spend thousands of dollars on stereos. Sometimes tens of thousands. There is a specialist industry right here in the States which builds stereo gear to a standard you wouldn't believe. Tubed amplifiers which cost more than a house. Speakers taller than me. Cables thicker than a garden hose. Some army guys had that stuff. I'd heard it on bases around the world. Wonderful. But they were wasting their money. Because the best stereo in the world is free. Inside your head. It sounds as good as you want it to. As loud as you want it to be.

Plan A is to hitch a ride out of here. But if they want a war, then plan B is to win it.

A calm environment is for after I finish work.

Don't get it right - get it WRITTEN!

For me the end of a book is just as exciting as it is for a reader.

Don't be sad that roses have thorns. Be glad that thorns have Roses. Today's the day I worried about yesterday and it didn't happen.

I was in television drama, which is a first cousin to the movies, and I trust myself to make the right decisions.

The third guy was different. He was what you got when you ate squirrels for four generations. Smarter than a rat and tougher than a goat, and jumpier than either one.

Anecdotally his fitness reports rated him well above average in the classroom, excellent in the field, fluently bilingual in English and French, passable in Spanish, outstanding on all man-portable weaponry, and beyond outstanding at hand-to-hand combat. Susan knew what that last rating meant. Like having a running chainsaw thrown at you

I had been coming to America very frequently for many, many years, so I had plenty of exposure - and maybe the best kind of exposure, because I think first impressions are very important. Maybe I notice stuff that is just subliminal to people who live here all the time.

This was like July 13th, 1943, the pivotal day of the Battle of the Kursk. We were like Alexander Vasilevsky, the Soviet general. If we attacked now, this minute, we had to keep on and on attacking until the enemy was run off his feet and the war was won. If we bogged down or paused for breath even for a second, we would be overrun again.

I felt alienated by the experience and decided to stay away from corporate employment.

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

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.

I'm not really into gourmet food; I'm the kind of guy who just stops by a place that looks good rather than heading for the restaurant of the moment.

I was fired from my television job, simple as that. Well, downsized, really, a classic 1990s situation.

So long as readers keep reading and my publishers keep publishing, I plan to keep on writing. I'd have to be an idiot to be burnt-out in this job.

It's a kind of zen question: if you write a book and no one reads it, is it really a book?

No, I'm a man with a rule. People leave me alone, I leave them alone. If they don't, I don't.

I love Italian food but that's too generic a term for what's available now: you have to narrow it down to Tuscan, Sicilian, and so on.

Writing is showbusiness for shy people. That's how I see it.

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.

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.

A handgun at two hundred feet is the same thing as crossing your fingers and making a wish.

My mother still calls me Jim and that is about it. Everyone else calls me Lee. My wife calls me whatever.