Quote

The way to write a thriller is to ask a question at the beginning, and answer it at the end.

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
Asks
Write
Ends
Thriller
Writing
Thrillers
Way
Answer
Beginning
Question
Answers

More quotes by Lee Child

Image
I've discovered writers by reading books left in airplane seats and weird hotels.
Lee Child
Image
Slippery slope. I carry a spare shirt, pretty soon I'm carrying spare pants. Then I'd need a suitcase. Next thing I know, I've got a house and a car and a savings plan and I'm filling out all kinds of forms.
Lee Child
Image
I'm not afraid of death. Death's afraid of me.
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
You do not mess with the special investigators.
Lee Child
Image
The key to thrillers is vicarious pleasure.
Lee Child
Image
I don't need validation, recognition or praise. What I need are facts and the facts are that one of my books gets sold, somewhere in the world, every second.
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
Image
I grew up in Birmingham, where they made useful things and made them well.
Lee Child
Image
The British regulatory system was revised, so that bigger profits were encouraged, which removed the option of big spending on programming. Quality just fell off a cliff, and all the old hands either left or were fired for being too expensive.
Lee Child
Image
I'm not a vagrant... I'm a hobo. Big difference.
Lee Child
Image
I had a brief theater background and loved the backstage world there's more backstage work in television, so I saw a job advertised and applied, and got it. That was back in 1977, when getting jobs was easy.
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
My mother still calls me Jim and that is about it. Everyone else calls me Lee. My wife calls me whatever.
Lee Child
Image
I just felt from personal observation that there is nothing more dislocated or alienated than a lifelong military person trying to cope in civilian life. It's like two completely separate planets.
Lee Child
Image
People who wear glasses, without them they always look unfocused, vulnerable. Out in the open. A layer removed.
Lee Child
Image
Don't get it right - get it WRITTEN!
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
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 have three desks. One empty for paperwork, one for the internet and email, and one for the writing computer.
Lee Child