“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
“Charlie said that death was beautiful, because people feared death.”
― Vincent Bugliosi, quote from Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders
“Fire isn’t good or bad. It just burns.”
― Karen Marie Moning, quote from Bloodfever
“We are never entirely sure about each other’s powers. It’s all a game. I would no more have asked him how he got here, or in what manner, than I would ask a mortal man how precisely he made love to his wife.”
― Anne Rice, quote from Memnoch the Devil
“No one thought of anything but themselves. My happiness, my future was the only thing you heard. Real love is to offer your life at the feet of another, and that’s what people today are incapable of.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, quote from Let the Right One In
“Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea towards no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.
The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
But night comes and starts to sing to me.”
― Pablo Neruda, quote from Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.