The Midnight Line Quotes

“The Zip Code is about the size of Chicago. With five people. But hey, welcome to Wyoming.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“She had used a simile, to explain and flatter and apologize all at once. She had written, “You’re like New York City. I love to visit, but I could never live there.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“I hate cowboys."
"There's nothing I can do to them a horse has not done”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“I could tell you, but then I’d have to bill you.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“no one should ever underestimate the appeal of an opiate high. Far as I can tell, it’s a beautiful thing. The way they talk about it, it’s the best thing ever. For some folks it hits the spot so hard it reboots their lives.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“He turned and saw the others come out after him. The not-very-magnificent seven.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“The night sky was still there. Still huge and black and dusted with millions of bright stars. Microscopically changed, he supposed, since the night before. But not because of his tiny dramas. It was completely indifferent.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“He liked Wyoming. For its heroic geography, and its heroic climate. And its emptiness. It was the size of the United Kingdom, but it had fewer people in it than Louisville, Kentucky. The Census Bureau called most of it uninhabited.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“What would be the army approach? Set the place on fire?” “No, that would be the Marine Corps approach. The army would conduct a careful survey of the exterior, and by great good fortune would discover a pane of glass previously broken by persons unknown, at a previous time, maybe long ago, or even just recently, which if true would reasonably suggest an ongoing emergency inside, which in turn would justify a good look around. I don’t think the Supreme Court could argue with that.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“that”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“These are promises as solemn as government debt.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“Much more interesting was what lay further to the south. The next right off the two-lane after Mule Crossing came three miles later. It was a forest service track into a nature preserve labeled Roosevelt National something. It was right at the bottom of the map. Right on the state line. The third word would be on the first Colorado sheet. Forest, presumably. Teddy Roosevelt, Reacher supposed, not Franklin. The great naturalist, except for when he was shooting things like tigers and elephants. People were complicated.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“Deal with it,” Reacher said. “It happened. It can’t un-happen. Most folks aren’t going to like it. Deep down humans haven’t been modern very long. But some won’t care. You’ll find them.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“I read your file,” the guy said again. “If you tilt it right and hold it in a sunbeam you can see the invisible writing. You were effective, but reckless.” “Was I?” “You know you were. You got away with things time after time.” “Did I?” “One damn thing after another. But you always came up smelling of roses.” “Then draw the appropriate conclusion, general. I wasn’t reckless. I was relying on methods I knew had worked before, and would likely work again. I felt I was the opposite of reckless. There’s a clue in the word. Reck comes from reckon, and I felt I did more reckoning than most folks. Not less.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“Cowboys are the worst. Not much I can do to them that a horse already hasn't. - Reacher”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“foam on his lip, from a long hard pull on a long-neck bottle. Maybe”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“Bramall told a joke about a lawyer who died and got to the pearly gates. Not fair, he said. I’m only forty-five. Saint Pete said no, we got a new system. Now we do it by billable hours. According to our records you’re 153.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“Anything to keep the guy awake. Anything to avoid the old joke: I want to die peacefully in my sleep like Grandpa. Not screaming in terror like his passengers.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“contained. And equable.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“He had foam on his lip, from a long hard pull on a long-neck bottle.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“Bramall told a joke about a lawyer who died and got to the pearly gates. Not fair, he said. I’m only 45. Saint Pete said no, we got a new system. Now we do it by billable hours. According to our records you’re 153.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“want to die peacefully in my sleep like Grandpa. Not screaming in terror like his passengers.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“wooden visitor chair polished to a high shine by a thousand pairs of pants.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“burglary for?”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“Afterwards she felt bad about the exclamation point. It looked girlish. But it had to. Really she meant for her boss to read her note and order an immediate resumption of surveillance. Just in case Scorpio’s incoming visitor proved significant. A no-brainer, surely. Obviously Jimmy from Wisconsin was lying when he said he didn’t tell the guy anything. That claim wasn’t logical. A guy scary enough to warrant a heads-up voice mail was scary enough to elicit the answer to just about any question he wanted to ask. So obviously the guy was already on his way. Time was therefore of the essence. But her boss claimed all executive authority as his own. Nudging was counterproductive. Hence the giggly deflection, to take the sting away. To make the guy think it was his own idea all along.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“Reacher kept the guy talking all the way through Minnesota, which he figured was his job, like human amphetamine. Anything to keep the guy awake. Anything to avoid the old joke: I want to die peacefully in my sleep like Grandpa. Not screaming in terror like his passengers. The resulting conversation spiralled off in all kinds of different directions. Institutional injustices in the milk business were exposed. Grievances were aired. Then the guy wanted to hear war stories, so Reacher made some up. The big truck stop came along soon enough. The guy had not been exaggerating. There was an acres- wide fuel stop, and a spreading two- storey motel a hundred yards long, and a warehouse- sized family restaurant, blazing with neon outside and fluorescence inside. There were back- to- back eighteen- wheelers wheezing in and out, and all kinds of cars and trucks and panel vans.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“Sometimes you woke up, and you knew for sure, from history and experience and weary intuition, that the brand new day would bring nothing good at all.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“Aspen groves blazed like flares on the slopes. Whole copses of hundreds of separate trees, but all joined together underground by a single root. An aspen wood was all one organism. The largest living thing on”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“Up close he had pitted skin on his face, unnaturally white, as if it had been treated with chemicals. The pallor made his eyes look dark. He was tall and thin. Maybe six feet two. Maybe a hundred sixty pounds. But only if he had a dollar’s worth of pennies in his pocket. All skin and bone, and awkward as a stepladder.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line

“Bikers were as split as Baptists. All the same, but different. Apparently these particular guys liked black leather tassels and chromium plating.”
― Lee Child, The Midnight Line