Tripwire Quotes

“People live, and then they die. And as long as they do both things properly, there's nothing much to regret".”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“First you spend a lot of time and money making the grass grow, just so you can spend a lot of time and money cutting it down again a little while later.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“Hopeless is hopeless, and don't ever pretend it ain't”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“People live, and then they die, and as long as they do both things properly, there’s nothing much to regret.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“There was nothing she had neglected to tell him, nothing he had neglected to tell her. People live, and then they die, and as long as they do both things properly, there’s nothing much to regret.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“He looked at them and wondered if they were the fools, or if he was.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“The sort of wallet that molds itself tight around the stuff crammed inside.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“People live, and then they die, and as long as they do both things properly, there's nothing much to regret.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“[Reacher] knew people with houses. He had talked to them, with the same kind of detached interest he would talk to a person who kept snakes as pets or entered ballroom dancing competitions.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“ask once, ask twice if you must, but for God's sake don't ask three times.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“pity the man who gets what he wants. And it’s better to travel hopefully than to arrive.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“Jodie didn’t need it explained to her that her father had been one of the good guys. She knew. She was moving with the serenity of a person who had loved the old guy all her life, and had been loved back. There was nothing she had neglected to tell him, nothing he had neglected to tell her. People live, and then they die, and as long as they do both things properly, there’s nothing much to regret.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“Yard work summed up the whole futile procedure. First you spend a lot of time and money making the grass grow, just so you can spend a lot of time and money cutting it down again a little while later.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“Wrong place,” Reacher said. “Wrong time, wrong reasons, wrong methods, wrong approach, wrong leadership. No real backing, no real will to win, no coherent strategy.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“It’s a big complex muscle, it beats and it beats, thirty million times a year. If it lasts twenty-seven hundred million beats, which is ninety years, we call it old age. If it lasts only eighteen hundred million beats, sixty years, we call it premature heart disease. We call it America’s biggest health problem, but really all we’re saying is sooner or later, it just stops going.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“Combat is about time and space and opposing forces. Like a huge four-dimensional diagram. First step is to misinform the enemy. Let him think your diagram is a completely different shape. You assume all communications are penetrated, and then you use them to spread lies and deceit. You buy yourself an advantage.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“It had been everything he had dreamed it would be, multiplied by a million. She wasn’t a myth. She was a living breathing creature, hard and strong and sinewy and perfumed, warm and shy and giving.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“Nine o'clock in the morning, the World Trade Center on its own is the sixth largest city in New York State. Bigger than Albany. Only sixteen acres of land, but a daytime population of 130,000 people.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“lawn. Yard work summed up the whole futile procedure. First you spend a lot of time and money making the grass grow, just so you can spend a lot of time and money cutting it down again a little while later. You curse about it getting too long, and then you worry about it staying too short and you sprinkle expensive water on it all summer, and expensive chemicals all fall.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“Chester Stone said nothing. Just stood up and threaded his way by all the furniture and over to the door. Through the reception area and into the corridor and into the elevator. Down eighty-eight floors and back outside, where the bright morning sun hit him in the face like a blow.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“The whole point of drifting was happy passive acceptance of no alternatives. Having alternatives ruined it.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“The guy stood a yard inside the dark room and waited, blinking, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom after the hot whiteness of the Key West sun. It was June, dead-on four o’clock in the afternoon, the southernmost part of the United States. Way farther south than most of the Bahamas. A hot white sun and a fierce temperature. Reacher sat at his table in back and sipped water from a plastic bottle and waited.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“their records. Then you killed an orderly and got away. You said I’m not going back, because you knew as soon as you arrived anywhere somebody would realize you weren’t Hobie. They’d find out who you were, and you’d be back in the shit. So you just disappeared. A new life, a new name. A clean slate. You want to deny anything yet?” Allen tightened his grip on Jodie. “It’s all bullshit" he said. Reacher shook his head. Pain flashed in his eye like a camera. “No, it’s all true" he said. “Nash Newman just identified Victor Hobie’s skeleton. It’s lying in a casket in Hawaii with your dog tags around its neck.” “Bullshit" Allen said again. “It was the teeth" Reacher said. “Mr. and Mrs. Hobie sent their boy to the dentist thirty-five times, to give him perfect teeth. Newman says they’re definitive. He spent an hour with the X rays, programming the computer. Then he recognized the exact same skull when he walked back past the casket. Definitive match.” Allen”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“People live”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“He found the fire stairs and ran down one level. The stairwell was utilitarian. No finesse in the decor. Just plain, dusty concrete with metal handrails. Behind every fire door was an extinguisher. Above the extinguisher was a bright red cabinet with a red-painted ax clipped into place behind glass. On the wall next to the cabinet was a giant stencil in red, marking the floor number.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“provision. He must have grinned and thought let’s see how you get out of this one, Reacher. He stared at the laptops and the comb-bound folders and winced inside. How was he going to cross the border of the distant country without getting issued with all this stuff? The suits and the ties and the black plastic battery-driven devices? The lizard-skin cases and the memorandums from the main office? He shuddered and found himself paralyzed against the bulkhead, panicking, not breathing, completely unable to move.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“Mine is forensic anthropology, which is a part of physical anthropology.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“shoulders. She was wearing nothing underneath it. She leaned forward and started on his buttons. She started from the bottom. She was dextrous. Her hands were small and neat and quick. Quicker than his had been.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“Like people she knew, lawyers or bankers, who had really wanted to be dancers or ballplayers. A dream from the past, unconnected with reality, but absolutely defining the identity of the person involved. A lawyer, who had wanted to be a dancer. A banker, who had wanted to be a ballplayer. A divorced thirty-year-old woman, who had wanted to be with Jack Reacher all along.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire

“Piet Mondrian was his favorite painter of all time, and this exact picture was his favorite work of all time. The title was Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue. Mondrian had painted the original in 1930 and Reacher had seen it in Zurich, Switzerland.”
― Lee Child, Tripwire