463 Quotes by Lee Child

No military service?” “No.” “I thought not,” Reacher said. “You let us take the high ground. Which was dumb. Because thirty guys don’t mean squat if they have to come up a staircase two by two. You know we’re armed. We could pick you off like squirrels. From inside a cinder block building. Which you can’t hurt unless you’re packing grenade launchers, which I don’t think you are. So don’t come up the stairs again. Especially not in the lead.

First you spend a lot of time and money making the grass grow, just so you can spend a lot of time and money cutting it down again a little while later.

Being ex-military is like being a lapsed Catholic. Even though they’re way in the back of your mind, the old rituals still exert a powerful pull.

The tall one sets the strategy, and the fat one works the angles. In.

There were pictures on the walls, all of them dime-store prints of Jesus. In all of them Jesus had blue eyes and wore pale blue robes and had long blond hair and a neat blond beard. He looked more like a Malibu surfer than a Jew from two thousand years ago.

This is why we need more women officers. For us it’s enough to win. For you, the other guy has to know he lost.

He drew back the string an extra inch. The arrowhead moved backward, the same inch, toward his hand, clenched tight around the grip. The bow curved harder. It sang with tension.

Reacher was led through the door on the left and onward to an interview room. Which had no windows. Just four blank walls, and a table bolted to the floor, with two chairs on one side and one on the other. The room had not been designed by the dining room guy. That was clear. There was no blond wood or carpet. Just scuffed white paint on cinder block, and a cracked concrete floor, and a fluorescent bulb in a wire cage on the ceiling.

Then Reacher breathed out and raised a placatory don’t-shoot palm, and he half-stood, slow and calm, unthreatening, the complete opposite of sudden, and he kept himself half-turned away from the guys with the guns, and half-turned toward the group on the sofa, and he said, “Come on, Emily, let’s get this done. They’re going to nail you one way or the other. Might as well make it easy on yourself.