Never Go Back Quotes

“Spread love and understanding,” Reacher said. “Use force if necessary.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“if you can’t acquaint an opponent with reason, you must acquaint his head with the sidewalk.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“How much do you work out?"
"I don't," he said. "It's genetic." Which it was. Puberty had brought him many things unbidden, including height and weight and an extreme mesomorph physique, with a six-pack like a cobbled city street, and a chest like a suit of NFL armor, and biceps like basketballs, and subcutaneous fat like a Kleenex tissue. He had never messed with any of it. No diets. No weights. No gym time. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, was his attitude.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“Spread love and understanding,” Reacher said. “Use force if necessary.” “Who said that?” “Leon Trotsky, I think.” “He was stabbed to death with an ice pick. In Mexico.” “That doesn’t invalidate his overall position. Not in and of itself.” “What was his overall position?” “Solid. He also said, if you can’t acquaint an opponent with reason, you must acquaint his head with the sidewalk. He was a man of sound instincts. In his private life, I mean. Apart from getting stabbed to death with an ice pick in Mexico, that is.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“A person either runs or he fights. It’s a binary choice, and I’m a fighter.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“This is why we need more women officers. For us it’s enough to win. For you, the other guy has to know he lost.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“Both were military. That was clear.Reacher could tell by their haircuts. No civilian barber would be as pragmatic or as brutal.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“Like they were puppets, and the puppeteer had sneezed.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“We're your legal advisors.'
Which they weren't, obviously. Reacher knew that. Army lawyers don't travel in pairs and breathe through their mouths.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Reacher”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“Fatherhood was up there as one of the most commonplace male experiences in all of human history. But to Reacher it had always seemed unlikely. Just purely theoretical. Like winning the Nobel Prize, or playing in the World Series, or being able to sing. Possible in principle, but always likely to pass him by. A destination for other people, but not for him.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“SAWs were not metal things with little teeth, good for cutting wood. SAWs were Squad Automatic Weapons, which were fearsome fully-automatic machine guns, with fearsome capacities and fearsome capabilities.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“A lesson learned long ago: the human brain was much more sensitive to side-to-side displacement than front-to-back. An evolutionary quirk, presumably, like most things.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“... Feral, from the Latin adjective ferus, wild, via bestia fear, wild animal. Generally held to mean having escaped from domestication, and having devolved back to a natural state.
Turner said, "It's like you've been sanded down to nothing but yes and no, and you and them, and black and white, and live or die. It makes me wonder, what does that to a person?"
"Life," Reacher said. "Mine, anyway."
"You're like a predator. Cold, and hard. Like this whole thing. You have it all mapped out. The four guys in the car, and their bosses. You're swimming toward them, right now, and there's going to be blood in the water. Yours or theirs, but there's going to be blood.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“The range had been exceptional. An apartment balcony fourteen hundred yards away had been identified as the rifleman’s hide. Fourteen hundred yards is more than three-quarters of a mile. The French president had been at an open-air podium behind”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“He’s worth having. All I got was two fake lawsuits.” “Seems like Morgan’s value just went down, as part of a credible”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“Fatherhood. Always unlikely. Like winning the Nobel Prize, or playing in the World Series. Not for him.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“It had maroon paint and exposed brick and scarred wood, and a chalkboard menu about ninety percent full of things that don’t really belong in coffee, like dairy products of various types and temperatures, and weird nut-based flavorings, and many other assorted pollutants.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“A visitor from outer space would assume the viability of the United States depended entirely on the ability of the citizenry to carry eight-by-four sheets of board, safely and in vast quantities.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“We’ll have to reason with them.” “Are you serious?” “Spread love and understanding,” Reacher said. “Use force if necessary.” “Who said that?” “Leon Trotsky, I think.” “He was stabbed to death with an ice pick. In Mexico.” “That doesn’t invalidate his overall position. Not in and of itself.” “What was his overall position?” “Solid. He also said, if you can’t acquaint an opponent with reason, you must acquaint his head with the sidewalk. He was a man of sound instincts. In his private life, I mean. Apart from getting stabbed to death with an ice pick in Mexico, that is.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“Twice a day the small white compact moved, for meals, she guessed, or bathroom breaks, and about four times a day the Hummer and the Charger swapped positions, but there was apparently no coordination between the agencies, because once a day in the early morning everyone was missing at the same time, for about twenty minutes. Zero agents, zero hour. The street went back to its normal self. Some kind of logic issue, she supposed, or simple math, like in class, with x number of cars, and y number of locations, and z number of hours to cover. Something had to give.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“You know where the word shrapnel comes from?” “Where?” “An eighteenth-century British guy named Henry Shrapnel.” “Really?” “He was a captain in their artillery for eight years. Then he invented an exploding shell, and they promoted him to major. The Duke of Wellington used the shell in the Peninsular Wars, and at the Battle of Waterloo.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“Turner eased to a stop, third car in line, in a narrowing lane, with the guard shack ahead on her left, and an unbroken row of concrete dragons’ teeth on her right, each one of them a squat, truncated pyramid about three feet tall, each one of them no doubt built on a rebar armature and socketed deep below grade.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“A real coin flipped by a real human trended closer to 51-49 in favor of whichever side was uppermost at the outset. No one could explain exactly why, but the phenomenon was easily observed in experiments. Something to do with multiple axes of spin, and wobble, and aerodynamics, and the general difference between theory and practice.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“Reacher was led through the door on the left and onward to an interview room. Which had no windows. Just four blank walls, and a table bolted to the floor, with two chairs on one side and one on the other. The room had not been designed by the dining room guy. That was clear. There was no blond wood or carpet. Just scuffed white paint on cinder block, and a cracked concrete floor, and a fluorescent bulb in a wire cage on the ceiling.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“Although he had read that Pittsburgh was becoming an in-demand moviemaking town.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“The grounds had an iron fence set in a stone knee wall, which was just wide enough for a small person to sit on, and Turner was a small person, and Reacher was used to being uncomfortable.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“Reacher got to them on the plane. He put them out of action and stole their wallets.” “On the plane?” “He broke Lozano’s fingers and Baldacci’s arms and no one noticed.” “That’s not possible.” “Apparently it is. One against two, on an airplane, with a hundred witnesses. It’s a blatant humiliation. And now he’s renting cars on our dime? Who does this guy think he is?”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“You make me feel uncomfortable."
"I'm sorry."
"Not your fault", she said. "It's just the way you are."
"And what way is that?"
"You're like something feral!”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“... They figured they would eat in California. Which would make them hungry, but Reacher didn't mind being hungry. he believed hunger kept him sharp. He believed is stimulated creativity in the brain. Another old evolutionary legacy. If you're hungry, you work out a smarter way to get the next woolly mammoth, today, not tomorrow.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back