Quote

I have the thing worked out - the trick or the surprise or the pivotal fact. Then I just start somewhere and let the story work itself out.

Lee Child

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lee Child
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: October 29
Author
Film Actor
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Coventry
England
UK
Jim Grant
James D. Jim Grant
Story
Fact
Pivotal
Facts
Trick
Stories
Tricks
Thing
Somewhere
Work
Surprise
Worked
Start

More quotes by Lee Child

Image
I'm not a vagrant... I'm a hobo. Big difference.
Lee Child
Image
I had a teacher once, grade school somewhere. Philippines, I think, because she always wore a big white hat. So it was somewhere hot. I was always twice the size of the other kids, and she used to say to me: count to ten before you get mad, Reacher. And I've counted way past ten on this one. Way past.
Lee Child
Image
What do I miss about the UK? Sadly, almost nothing. Maybe the midnight sun, in June in the north. That's all.
Lee Child
Image
I wanted readers to be genuinely unsure as to whether she's telling the truth or lying. It meant making her partly sympathetic, and partly unsympathetic, which wasn't easy.
Lee Child
Image
I love Italian food but that's too generic a term for what's available now: you have to narrow it down to Tuscan, Sicilian, and so on.
Lee Child
Image
Full of thrills and tension - but smart and human too.
Lee Child
Image
It gives me some kind of chance to survive the night. How are those better odds? If you come back with me, you're guaranteed to survive the night. No, Reacher said. If I come back with you, I'm guaranteed to die of shame.
Lee Child
Image
I was in the machine. My whole life. Then the machine coughed and spat me out. So I thought, OK, if I'm out, I'm out. All the way out. I was a little angry and it was probably an immature reaction. But I got used to it.
Lee Child
Image
The best fights are the ones you don't have, a wise man once said to me.
Lee Child
Image
Don't be sad that roses have thorns. Be glad that thorns have Roses. Today's the day I worried about yesterday and it didn't happen.
Lee Child
Image
People who wear glasses, without them they always look unfocused, vulnerable. Out in the open. A layer removed.
Lee Child
Image
I've discovered writers by reading books left in airplane seats and weird hotels.
Lee Child
Image
So, how to stay inside the world of entertainment without actually getting another job? I felt the only logical answer was to become a novelist. So I wrote the first book - driven by some very real feelings of desperation - and it worked.
Lee Child
Image
Practically any Western has a homesteader in trouble, and a mysterious rider shows up off the range, solves the problem over two or three days, and then rides off into the sunset.
Lee Child
Image
A calm environment is for after I finish work.
Lee Child
Image
Imagine the uproar if the Federal government tried to make everyone wear a radio transmitter around their neck so we can keep track of their movements. But people happily carry their cell phones in their purses and pockets.
Lee Child
Image
So long as readers keep reading and my publishers keep publishing, I plan to keep on writing. I'd have to be an idiot to be burnt-out in this job.
Lee Child
Image
Hit them fast, hit them hard, and hit them a lot.
Lee Child
Image
Hope for the best, plan for the worst.
Lee Child
Image
Lone women shouldn't stop in the middle of nowhere for giant unkempt strangers with duct tape on their faces.
Lee Child