Quotes from Persuader

Lee Child ·  496 pages

Rating: (51.4K votes)


“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.”
― Lee Child, quote from Persuader


“What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.”
― Lee Child, quote from Persuader


“Nothing ever works like you predict it. All plans fall apart as soon as the first shot is fired.”
― Lee Child, quote from Persuader


“Ninety percent of asking questions is about listening to answers.”
― Lee Child, quote from Persuader


“Now you had one come back, Harley.”
― Lee Child, quote from Persuader



“I don’t really care about the little guy. I just hate the big guy. I hate big smug people who think they can get away with things.”
― Lee Child, quote from Persuader


“Revising objectives is smart because it stops you throwing good money after bad.”
― Lee Child, quote from Persuader


“any structure that has a ranking system tempts you to try to climb it.”
― Lee Child, quote from Persuader


“What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. He thought JFK had said it. I thought it was actually Friedrich Nietzsche, and he said destroy, not kill. What doesn’t destroy us makes us stronger.”
― Lee Child, quote from Persuader


“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.”
― Lee Child, quote from Persuader



“People who say "no" right away are usually lying. A truthful person is perfectly capable of saying "no" but generally they stop and think about it first. And they add "sorry" or something like that. Maybe they come out with some questions of their own. It's human nature. They say, "Sorry, no, why, what happened?”
― Lee Child, quote from Persuader


“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.”
― Lee Child, quote from Persuader


“key. I need to move up into Duke’s job. Then I’ll be top boy on Beck’s side. Then I’ll”
― Lee Child, quote from Persuader


“OK,’ Duffy said. ‘So what have we got?’ We had rugs. The door rattled upward and daylight”
― Lee Child, quote from Persuader


“fifty feet above the rocks. The wind”
― Lee Child, quote from Persuader



“bradawl. It was just a blunt steel spike set into a handle.”
― Lee Child, quote from Persuader


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About the author

Lee Child
Born place: The United Kingdom
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“The Mongols loved competitions of all sorts, and they organized debates among rival religions the same way they organized wrestling matches. It began on a specific date with a panel of judges to oversee it. In this case Mongke Khan ordered them to debate before three judges: a Christian, a Muslim, and a Buddhist. A large audience assembled to watch the affair, which began with great seriousness and formality. An official lay down the strict rules by which Mongke wanted the debate to proceed: on pain of death “no one shall dare to speak words of contention.” Rubruck and the other Christians joined together in one team with the Muslims in an effort to refute the Buddhist doctrines. As these men gathered together in all their robes and regalia in the tents on the dusty plains of Mongolia, they were doing something that no other set of scholars or theologians had ever done in history. It is doubtful that representatives of so many types of Christianity had come to a single meeting, and certainly they had not debated, as equals, with representatives of the various Muslim and Buddhist faiths. The religious scholars had to compete on the basis of their beliefs and ideas, using no weapons or the authority of any ruler or army behind them. They could use only words and logic to test the ability of their ideas to persuade. In the initial round, Rubruck faced a Buddhist from North China who began by asking how the world was made and what happened to the soul after death. Rubruck countered that the Buddhist monk was asking the wrong questions; the first issue should be about God from whom all things flow. The umpires awarded the first points to Rubruck. Their debate ranged back and forth over the topics of evil versus good, God’s nature, what happens to the souls of animals, the existence of reincarnation, and whether God had created evil. As they debated, the clerics formed shifting coalitions among the various religions according to the topic. Between each round of wrestling, Mongol athletes would drink fermented mare’s milk; in keeping with that tradition, after each round of the debate, the learned men paused to drink deeply in preparation for the next match. No side seemed to convince the other of anything. Finally, as the effects of the alcohol became stronger, the Christians gave up trying to persuade anyone with logical arguments, and resorted to singing. The Muslims, who did not sing, responded by loudly reciting the Koran in an effort to drown out the Christians, and the Buddhists retreated into silent meditation. At the end of the debate, unable to convert or kill one another, they concluded the way most Mongol celebrations concluded, with everyone simply too drunk to continue.”
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