Top 350 Lee Child Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Hope for the best, plan for the worst.”

— Lee Child

2. “Don’t get it right – get it WRITTEN!”

— Lee Child

3. “Do it once and do it right and do it quickly.”

— Lee Child

4. “Never forgive, never forget. Do it once and do it right. You reap what you sow. Plans go to hell as soon as the first shot is fired. Protect and serve. Never off duty.”

— Lee Child

5. “No, I’m a man with a rule. People leave me alone, I leave them alone. If they don’t, I don’t.”

— Lee Child

6. “I’m a rich man. To have everything you need is the definition of affluence.”

— Lee Child

7. “Writing is showbusiness for shy people. That’s how I see it.”

— Lee Child

8. “Never forget a Favor, Never forgive a Slight!”

— Lee Child

9. “You do not mess with the special investigators.”

— Lee Child

10. “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

11. “I said nothing. I’m good at saying nothing. I don’t like talking. I could go the rest of my life without saying another word, if I had to.”

— Lee Child

12. “I don’t know what the secret is when I am writing it – it really is a surprise to me.”

— Lee Child

13. “Sometimes if you want to know for sure whether the stove is hot, the only way to find out is to touch it.”

— Lee Child

14. “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

15. “In order to win, you must be prepared to lose.”

— Lee Child

16. “A person less fortunate than yourself deserves the best you can give. Because of duty, and honor, and service. You understand those words? You should do your job right, and you should do it well, simply because you can, without looking for notice or reward.”

— Lee Child

17. “All of us write wish fulfillment.”

— Lee Child

18. “I have a kind of old-fashioned, artisan approach.”

— Lee Child

19. “I have three desks. One empty for paperwork, one for the internet and email, and one for the writing computer.”

— Lee Child

20. “I’m not a vagrant. I’m a hobo. Big difference.”

— Lee Child

21. “Look, don’t see, listen, don’t hear. The more you engage, the longer you survive.”

— Lee Child

22. “I’m not afraid of death. Death’s afraid of me.”

— Lee Child

23. “He had fallen out of the ugly tree, and hit every branch.”

— Lee Child

24. “A calm environment is for after I finish work.”

— Lee Child

25. “Street-fighting’s first rule: there are no rules.”

— Lee Child

26. “I don’t care about the little guy. I just hate the big guy. I hate big smug people who think they can get away with things.”

— Lee Child

27. “I’d never believed in luck. Never had any cause to. Never relied on it, because I never could.”

— Lee Child

28. “Some old guy once said that the meaning of life is that it ends.”

— Lee Child

29. “For men, as they get bogged down with responsibilities, commitments, bureaucracy, it is a fantasy just to think of shedding everything literally, walking away with nothing at all, and just hitting the road.”

— Lee Child

30. “Plan A is to hitch a ride out of here. But if they want a war, then plan B is to win it.”

— Lee Child

31. “Now they broke my toothbrush, I don’t own anything.”

— Lee Child

32. “You see something scary, you should stand up and step toward it, not away from it. Instinctively, reflexively, in a raging fury.”

— Lee Child

33. “A handgun at two hundred feet is the same thing as crossing your fingers and making a wish.”

— Lee Child

34. “People who wear glasses, without them they always look unfocused, vulnerable. Out in the open. A layer removed.”

— Lee Child

35. “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

36. “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

37. “It’s a kind of zen question: if you write a book and no one reads it, is it really a book?”

— Lee Child

38. “I’ve discovered writers by reading books left in airplane seats and weird hotels.”

— Lee Child

Featured in: Reading Quotes

39. “I’m opposed to censorship of any kind, especially by government. But it’s plain common sense that producers should target their product with some kind of sensitivity.”

— Lee Child

40. “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

41. “What do I miss about the UK? Sadly, almost nothing. Maybe the midnight sun, in June in the north. That’s all.”

— Lee Child

42. “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

43. “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

44. “I love visiting LA. It’s an endlessly fascinating city, and is, of course, America’s entertainment capital. Each time I go, I fall in love with it all over again. That said, it’s not the sort of place I’d want to live.”

— Lee Child

45. “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

46. “Printing currency for foreigners to buy is the best racket a government can get into.”

— Lee Child

47. “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

Featured in: Reading Quotes

48. “I need a stimulating environment to write because my books are driven at 100 miles per hour at a time.”

— Lee Child

49. “I do a little fact checking now and then. Other than that its impact is simply that email has revolutionized communication for me, and my website has built up a community of readers, which is a lot of fun.”

— Lee Child

Featured in: Fun Quotes

50. “My mother still calls me Jim and that is about it. Everyone else calls me Lee. My wife calls me whatever.”

— Lee Child