Quotes from The Affair

“The best fights are the ones you don't have", a wise man once said to me.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“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.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“He had fallen out of the ugly tree, and hit every branch.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“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.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“The first day of the rest of my life.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“No one expects a head butt. Humans don’t hit things with their heads. Some inbuilt atavistic instinct says so. A head butt changes the game. It adds a kind of unhinged savagery to the mix. An unprovoked head butt is like bringing a sawed-off shotgun to a knife fight.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“The best fights are the ones you don’t have,”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“Sometimes if you want to know for sure whether the stove is hot, the only way to find out is to touch it.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“On his day of demobilization a lugubrious one-armed, one-eyed brigadier wished him well and then added, apropos of nothing, “Mark my words, Moutier, a great war leaves a country with three armies: an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“There are a lot of them, all around the wsorld, all built a lifetime ago, during the long and spectacular blaze of American military power and self-confidence, when there was nothing we couldn't or wouldn't do. I was a product of that era, but not a part of it. I was nostalgic for something I had never experienced.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“The Pentagon was built because World War Two was coming, and because World War Two was coming it was built without much steel. Steel was needed elsewhere, as always in wartime. Thus the giant building was a monument to the strength and mass of concrete. So much sand was needed for the mix it was dredged right out of the Potomac River, not far from the rising walls themselves. Nearly a million tons of it. The result was extreme solidity.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“Most right-handed people end up walking wide counterclockwise circles, because most right-handed people have left legs fractionally shorter than their right legs. Basic biology and geometry. I avoided that particular peril by stepping to the right of every tenth tree I came to, whether I thought I needed to or not.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“They all shared Stan’s personal allegiance to the famous old saying: War is not about dying for your country. It’s about making the other guy die for his.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“He said all that needs to happen for evil to prevail is that good men do nothing.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“You ever notice how the folks who talk loudest about small government always seem to live in the states with the biggest subsidies?”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“Rule two: watch his eyes. If they stayed up, he was going to swing. If they dropped down, he was going to kick.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“No one expects a head butt. Humans don’t hit things with their heads. Some inbuilt atavistic instinct says so. A head butt changes the game. It adds a kind of unhinged savagery to the mix. An unprovoked head butt is like bringing a sawed-off shotgun to a knife fight. The guy went down like an empty suit.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“Realitatile sunt musafiri nepoftiti in lumea fanteziei.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“old enough to show some mileage, young enough to still find some amusement in the world.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“It would have been hard to be noisier, in fact, short of firing the Winchester a couple of times and singing the National Anthem.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“He also said the day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“Any day could be the last of life or liberty, so small pleasures were always worth pursuing.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“plant. She said, “OK, time out. Convince”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“Then I sat in my chair”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“Cand e vorba de sange, cu putin ajungi departe.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“You looked angry twenty minutes ago. With the McKinney family.” “That was just a technical problem. Space and time. I didn’t want to be late for dinner. I wasn’t angry, really. Well, not at first. I got a bit frustrated later. You know, mentally. I mean, when there were four of them, I gave them the chance to come back in numbers. And what did they do? They added two more guys. That’s all. They showed up with a total of six. What is that about? It’s deliberate disrespect.” Deveraux said, “I think most people would consider six against one to be fairly respectful.” “But I warned them. I told them they’d need more. I was trying to be fair. But they wouldn’t listen. It was like talking to the Pentagon.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“Both of them had noses like spoiled eggplants. Both of them had two black eyes. Both of them had crusted blood on their lips. Neither one of them”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

“impatient, reckless, careless, and full of entitlement.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair

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Popular quotes

“It is in our collective behavior that we are the most mysterious. We won't be able to construct machines like ourselves until we've understood this, and we're not even close. All we know is the phenomenon: we spend our time sending messages to each other, talking and trying to listen at the same time, exchanging information. This seems to be our most urgent biological function; it is what we do with our lives. By the time we reach the end, each of us has taken in a staggering store, enough to exhaust any computer, much of it incomprehensible, and we generally manage to put out even more than we take in. Information is our source of energy; we are driven by it. It has become a tremendous enterprise, a kind of energy system on its own. All 3 billion of us are being connected by telephones, radios, television sets, airplanes, satellites, harangues on public-address systems, newspapers, magazines, leaflets dropped from great heights, words got in edgewise. We are becoming a grid, a circuitry around the earth.”
― Lewis Thomas, quote from The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

“We need to rediscover how to talk about change: how to imagine very different arrangements for ourselves, free of the dangerous cant of ‘revolution’.”
― Tony Judt, quote from Ill Fares the Land

“Part of what we pick up in looking at Jesus in the gospel is a way of viewing the whole world. That worldview informs all our values and deeply shapes our thinking and decision-making. Another part of what we absorb is greater confidence in Jesus' counsel and his promises. This has its own powerful effect on what we fear and desire and choose. Another part of what we take up from beholding the glory of Christ is greater delight in his fellowship and deeper longing to see him in heaven. This has its own liberating effect from the temptations of this world. All these have their own peculiar way of changing us into the likeness of Christ. Therefore, we should not think that pursuing likeness to Christ has no other components than just looking at Jesus. Looking at Jesus produces holiness along many different paths.”
― John Piper, quote from God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God's Love as the Gift of Himself

“She was theorizing on the Deep State; that enduring Turkish paranoia that the nation really was a conspiracy run by a cabal of generals, judges, industrialists and gangsters. The Taksim Square massacre of three years before, the Kahramanmaraş slaughter of Alevis a few months after, the oil crisis and the enduring economic instability, even the ubiquity of the Grey Wolves nationalist youth movement handing out their patriotic leaflets and defiling Greek Churches: all were links in an accelerating chain of events running through the fingers of the Derin Devlet. To what end? the men asked. Coup, she said, leaning forward, her fingers pursed. It was then that Georgios Ferentinou adored her. The classic profile, the strength of her jaw and fine cheekbones. The way she shook her head when the men disagreed with her, how her bobbed, curling hair swayed. The way she would not argue but set her lips and stared, as if their stupidity was a stubborn offence against nature. Her animation in argument balanced against her marvellous stillness when listening, considering, drawing up a new answer. How she paused, feeling the regard of another, then turned to Georgios and smiled.
In the late summer of 1980 Georgios Ferentinou fell in love with Ariana Sinanidis by Meryem Nasi’s swimming pool. Three days later, on September 12th, Chief of General Staff Kenan Evren overthrew the government and banned all political activity.”
― Ian McDonald, quote from The Dervish House

“Alas my love you do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously;
And I have loved you oh so longer
Delighting in your company.
Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves was my heart of gold,
Greensleeves was my heart of joy,
And who but my Lady Greensleeves.”
― Paula Brackston, quote from The Witch's Daughter

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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.

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