Quotes from Without Fail

Lee Child ·  14 pages

Rating: (68.5K votes)


“They found out about him in July and stayed angry all through August. They tried to kill him in September. It was way too soon. They weren't ready. The attempt was a failure. It could have been a disaster, but it was actually a miracle. Because nobody noticed.”
― Lee Child, quote from Without Fail


“A good coat is like a good lawyer. it covers your ass.”
― Lee Child, quote from Without Fail


“problem shared is a problem halved.”
― Lee Child, quote from Without Fail


“he could hear faint sounds from their”
― Lee Child, quote from Without Fail


“But storing magazines full of bullets was a bad idea. Leave them long enough, the spring in the magazine learns its compressed shape and won’t function right. More jams are caused by tired magazine springs than any other single reason. Better to keep the gun with a single shell locked in the chamber and all the other bullets loose. You can fire once right-handed while you thumb loose shells into an empty magazine with your left. Slower than the ideal, but a lot better than pulling the trigger and hearing nothing at all except a dull click. He closed the kitchen”
― Lee Child, quote from Without Fail



“faster but the picture remained entirely static. The stillness of a deserted office descended and held steady as time rushed by. “When do the cleaners come in?” Reacher asked. “Just before midnight,” Froelich said. “That late?” “They’re night workers. This is a round-the-clock operation.” “And there’s nothing else visible before then?” “Nothing at all.” “So spool ahead. We get the picture.” Froelich operated the buttons and shuttled between fast-forward with snow on the screen and regular-speed playback with a picture to check the timecode. At eleven-fifty P.M. she let the tape run. The counter clicked ahead, a second at a time. At eleven fifty-two there was motion at the far end of the corridor. A team of three people emerged from the gloom. There were two women and a man, all of them wearing dark overalls. They looked Hispanic. They were all short and compact, dark-haired, stoic. The man was pushing a cart. It had a black garbage bag locked into a hoop at the front, and trays stacked with cloths and spray bottles on shelves at the rear. One of the women was carrying a vacuum cleaner. It rode on”
― Lee Child, quote from Without Fail


“horses faded away. Maybe it had served time as an office. It was impossible to tell. It”
― Lee Child, quote from Without Fail


“through his side window, down the length of the”
― Lee Child, quote from Without Fail


“You know, a problem shared is a problem halved.”
― Lee Child, quote from Without Fail


About the author

Lee Child
Born place: The United Kingdom
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Popular quotes

“There have been a lot of Smedries over the centuries," he said, "and a lot of Talents. Many of them tend to be similar, in the long run. There are four kinds: Talents that affect space, time, knowledge, and the physical world."

"Take my talent, for instance," he continued. "I change things in space. I can get lost, then get found again."

"What about grandpa Smedry?"

"Time," Kas said. "He arrives late to things. Australia, however, has a Talent that can change the physical world--in this case, her own shape. Her Talent is fairly specific, and not as broad as your grandfather's. For instance, there was a Smedry a couple of centuries back who could look ugly any time he wanted, not just when he woke up in the morning. Other have been able to change anyone's appearance, not just their own. Understand?"

I shrugged. "I guess so."

"The closer the Talent gets to its purest form, the more powerful it is," Kaz said. "Your grandfather's Talent is very pure--he can manipulate time in a lot of different circumstances. Your father and I have very similar Talents--I can get lost and Attica can lose things--and both are flexible."

"What about Sing?" I asked.

"Tripping. That's what we call a knowledge Talent--he knows how to do something normal with extraordinary ability. Like Australia, though, his power isn't very flexible."

I nodded slowly. "So...what does this have to do with me?"

"Well, it's hard to say," Kaz said. "You're getting into some deep philosophy now, kid. There are those who argue that the Breaking Talent is simply a physical-world Talent, but one that is very versatile and very powerful.
There are others who argue that the Breaking Talent is much more. It seems to be able to do things that affect all four areas.
Legends say that one of your ancestors--one of only two others to have this Talent--broke time and space together, forming a little bubble where nothing aged.
Other records speak of breakings equally marvelous. Breakings that change people's memory or their abilities. What is it to 'break' something? What can you change? How far can the Talent go?”
― Brandon Sanderson, quote from Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones


“The people on the steps chose to scream like a bunch of people on some steps, but they did get out of the way. Grandpa”
― Brandon Sanderson, quote from Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia


“Gotta keep an eye on those terrorist polar bears, and make sure Santa's elves aren't planning a holy war.”
― Graham McNamee, quote from Bonechiller


“We're plotting to steal time itself from you.... We're going to spike it to the floor as it slips by. And just as you come over to see why it's so still, we'll pull it out from under you--and send you spinning off around the galaxy's edge. We're planning to pluck all the best stars out of the sky and stuff them in our pockets... so that when we meet you once again and thrust our hands deep inside to hide our embarrassment, our fingertips will smart on them, as if they were desert grains, caught down in the seams, and we'll smile at you on your way to a glory that, for all our stellar thefts, we shall never be able to duplicate.”
― Samuel R. Delany, quote from Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand


“When people are voiceless, they will have temper tantrums like a child who has not been paid attention to. And riots are massive temper tantrums from a neglected and voiceless people.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., quote from The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.


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