Lee Child Quotes

if you can’t acquaint an opponent with reason, you must acquaint his head with the sidewalk.

Both were military. That was clear.Reacher could tell by their haircuts. No civilian barber would be as pragmatic or as brutal.

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

It was an article of faith with NCOs [noncommissioned officers] that they were better than their officers. And they were usually right. Certainly I had been happy with mine. They had done plenty of good work for me.

I fought to stay awake and keep the car on the road. And I thought back to texts I had read from the British Army in India, during the Raj, at the height of their empire. Young subalterns trapped in junior ranks had their own mess. They would dine together in splendid dress uniforms and talk about their chances of promotion. But they had none, unless a superior officer died. Dead men's shoes was the rule. So they would raise their crystal glasses of fine French wine and toast "bloody wars and dread diseases" because a casualty further up the chain of command was their only way to get ahead. Brutal, but that's how it's always been, in the military.

The plane was on descent. Reacher could feel it in his ears. And he could feel abrupt turns. The pilot was military, so he was using the rudder. Civilian pilots avoid using the rudder. Using the rudder makes the plane slew, like a car skids. Passengers don't like the feeling. So civilian pilots turn by juicing the engines on one side and backing off on the others. Then the plane comes around smoothly. But military pilots don't care about their passengers' comfort. It's not like they've bought tickets.

As a general rule. it's a comfort issue, literally and metaphorically. And intimacy issue. It's a big step, putting on foreign underwear. Like betrayal, or emigration.

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.