Lee Child Quotes - Page 4

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.

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.

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.

Reacher said, "So here's the thing Brett. Either you take your hand off my chest, or I'll take it off your wrist.

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.

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.

It's always tense when you move a character from a book to the screen. Always tense.

Most actors are small, anyway - at least compared to me.

I grew up in Birmingham, where they made useful things and made them well.

I don't know what the secret is when I am writing it - it really is a surprise to me.

All of us write wish fulfillment.

That should be your town motto. It's all I ever hear. Like: New Hampshire, Live Free or Die. It should be: Despair, You Need To Leave Now.

I like food, like any other guy, but it is not the main thing in my life. I can do without it.

It's always sad if anybody you know has a personal problem.

I've discovered writers by reading books left in airplane seats and weird hotels.

I went to college. West Point is technically a college.

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.

Full of thrills and tension - but smart and human too.

I'd been a thriller reader all my life.

I was fired from my television job, simple as that. Well, downsized, really, a classic 1990s situation.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.