Lee Child Quotes

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.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

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

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.

Don't get it right - get it WRITTEN!

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

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

The first day of the rest of my life.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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 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.

You do not mess with the special investigators.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

The most sustained feat of imagination in mystery fiction today.

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.