Quotes from The Hard Way

“You think you've been in deep shit before, and then you realise you have absolutely no conception of how deep shit can really be.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Hard Way

“Do you see anything Wrong with my teeth?"
"Plenty, I'm surprised you can eat. Maybe that's why your're so little”
― Lee Child, quote from The Hard Way

“Special Forces guys were usually small. They were usually lean, fast, and whippy. Built for endurance and stamina and full of smarts and cunning. Like foxes, not like bears.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Hard Way

“I’m not much to talk about. What you see is what you get.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Hard Way

“He believed that anything could be reverse-engineered. If one human or group of humans put something together, then another human or group of humans could take it apart again. It was a basic principle. All that was required was empathy and thought and imagination. And he liked pressure. He liked deadlines. He liked a short and finite time to crack a problem. He liked a quiet space to work in. And he liked a similar mind to work with.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Hard Way

“It helped a lonely man feel connected and isolated both at the same time.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Hard Way

“Jack Reacher ordered espresso, double, no peel, no cube, foam cup, no china, and before it arrived at his table he saw a man’s life change forever.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Hard Way

“A soldier knows that a satisfactory observation point provides an unobstructed view to the front and adequate security to the flanks and the rear. He knows it provides protection from the elements and concealment of the observers. He knows it offers a reasonable likelihood of undisturbed occupation for the full duration of the operation.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Hard Way

“Reacher liked New York more than most places. He liked the casual indifference of it all and the frantic hustle and the total anonymity.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Hard Way

“His shoes were bench-made by a company called Cheaney, from Northampton in England. Smarter buys than Church’s, which were basically the same shoes but with a premium tag for the name. The style Reacher had chosen was called Tenterden, which was a brown semi-brogue made of heavy pebbled leather.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Hard Way

“He liked the electric darkness and the hot dirty air and the blasts of noise and traffic and the manic barking sirens and the crush of people. It helped a lonely man feel connected and isolated both at the same time.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Hard Way

“the only way to keep fear and panic at bay was to concentrate ruthlessly on the job at hand.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Hard Way

“You try that shit and i'll bend you over and i'll use Addison's head to hammer Perez up your ass like a nail”
― Lee Child, quote from The Hard Way

“Text messaging,” Pauling said. “What’s that?” “You can send written words by cell phone.” “When did that start?” “Years ago.” “OK,” Reacher said. “Live and learn.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Hard Way

“Audibility decays according to the inverse square law. Twice the distance, the sound gets four times as quiet. Four times the distance, sixteen times as quiet.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Hard Way

“No reason to look for complications. You hear hoof beats, you look for horses, not zebras.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Hard Way

“No,” Burke said. “Thank God.” So”
― Lee Child, quote from The Hard Way

“Reacher always arranged the smallest details in his life so he could move on at a split second’s notice. It was an obsessive habit. He owned nothing and carried nothing. Physically he was a big man, but he cast a small shadow and left very little in his wake.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Hard Way

“Drivers hit their horns in anticipation of potential fractional delays.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Hard Way

About the author

Popular quotes

“Saudi Arabia, and began having children, Osama bin Laden completed his high school education at the Al-Thager”
― Jean Sasson, quote from Growing Up Bin Laden: Osama's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World

“Ignorance has never been the problem. The problem was and continues to be unexamined confidence in western civilization and the unwarranted certainty of Christianity. And arrogance. Perhaps it is unfair to judge the past by the present, but it is also necessary.

If nothing else, an examination of the past—and of the present, for that matter—can be instructive. It shows us that there is little shelter and little gain for Native peoples in doing nothing. So long as we possess one element of sovereignty, so long as we possess one parcel of land, North America will come for us, and the question we have to face is how badly we wish to continue to pursue the concepts of sovereignty and self-determination. How important is it for us to maintain protected communal homelands? Are our traditions and languages worth the cost of carrying on the fight? Certainly the easier and more expedient option is simply to step away from who we are and who we wish to be, sell what we have for cash, and sink into the stewpot of North America.

With the rest of the bones.

No matter how you frame Native history, the one inescapable constant is that Native people in North America have lost much. We’ve given away a great deal, we’ve had a great deal taken from us, and, if we are not careful, we will continue to lose parts of ourselves—as Indians, as Cree, as Blackfoot, as Navajo, as Inuit—with each generation. But this need not happen. Native cultures aren’t static. They’re dynamic, adaptive, and flexible, and for many of us, the modern variations of older tribal traditions continue to provide order, satisfaction, identity, and value in our lives. More than that, in the five hundred years of European occupation, Native cultures have already proven themselves to be remarkably tenacious and resilient.

Okay.

That was heroic and uncomfortably inspirational, wasn’t it? Poignant, even. You can almost hear the trumpets and the violins. And that kind of romance is not what we need. It serves no one, and the cost to maintain it is too high.

So, let’s agree that Indians are not special. We’re not … mystical. I’m fine with that. Yes, a great many Native people have a long-standing relationship with the natural world. But that relationship is equally available to non-Natives, should they choose to embrace it. The fact of Native existence is that we live modern lives informed by traditional values and contemporary realities and that we wish to live those lives on our terms.”
― Thomas King, quote from The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America

“Tell me Georgia, does he make you come so hard you forget your own name?”
― Adriane Leigh, quote from The Mourning After

“I almost fell off my stool. Not because I didn't think he loved Shaw, or that he would make an awesome husband, but because he was my impulsive, wild, unhinged little brother. Rule was not a guy that I ever thought would settle into the role of responsible homeowner and faithful husband. I just stared at him until he got mad and snapped.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Rome

“I know the path by heart, by heart- a funny expression, so true. My heart knows right where to go.”
― Cynthia Hand, quote from Radiant

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

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.