This is why we need more women officers. For us it’s enough to win. For you, the other guy has to know he lost.
Life is endlessly capable of surprises, so he knew one day he would come face to face with his physical equal. With somebody who might worry him. But he looked and saw this wasn’t the day. So he just smiled and looked away again.
What’s the best place to hide a car? In an airport long-term lot. Like where’s the best place to hide a grain of sand? On the beach.
Jack Reacher ordered espresso, double, no peel, no cube, foam cup, no china, and before it arrived at his table he saw a man’s life change forever.
Socratic, they call it in college. All kinds of back and forth, designed to elicit truths implicitly known by all rational beings.
We’re all atheists. You don’t believe in Zeus or Thor or Neptune or Augustus Caesar or Mars or Venus or Sun Ra. You reject a thousand gods. Why should it bother you if someone else rejects a thousand and one?
Don’t go anywhere, don’t do anything, don’t call anyone. I guessed talking with the guy would amount to doing something, which would contravene the don’t do anything part of the command. But then, breathing was doing something, technically. So was metabolizing. My hair was growing, my beard was growing, all twenty of my nails were growing, I was losing weight. It was impossible not to do anything. So I decided that component of the order was purely rhetorical.
He said all that needs to happen for evil to prevail is that good men do nothing.
We’ve already got gays in the military. We always have had. World War Two, the Western Allies had fourteen million men in uniform. Any kind of reasonable probability says at least a million of them were gay. And we won that war, as I recall, last time I checked with the history books. We won it big time.
Some officers of his acquaintance had barked and yelled and shouted. He had always found it more effective to speak low and quiet, enunciating clearly and precisely as if to an idiot child, bearing down with an icy stare. That way he had found the implied menace to be unmistakable.
Casey Nice said, “Jesus Christ.” “I don’t think so,” I said. “No beard. No sandals.
Any day could be the last of life or liberty, so small pleasures were always worth pursuing.
I could tell you, but then I’d have to bill you.
Don’t underestimate the attraction of your ass, Roscoe, whatever you do.
So I got desperate. I was really panicking. Then I got this idea. I figured if I looked at people hitching rides, I might find somebody. One of them might turn out to be the right type of person, and willing to help me. I tried to choose pretty carefully. I only stopped for rough-looking men.
Short of a shotgun, a pool cue is the best barroom weapon ever invented. Short enough to be handy, long enough to be useful, made out of fine hardwood and nicely weighted with lead.
Life,” Joe said. “What a completely weird thing it is. A person lives sixty years, does all kinds of things, knows all kinds of things, feels all kinds of things, and then it’s over. Like it never happened at all.” “We’ll always remember her.” “No, we’ll remember parts of her. The parts she chose to share. The tip of the iceberg. The rest, only she knew about. Therefore the rest already doesn’t exist. As of now.
Rule two: watch his eyes. If they stayed up, he was going to swing. If they dropped down, he was going to kick.
She nodded a greeting and took a muffin and a cup of coffee. Then she left again. I took two muffins and an empty cup and a whole box of coffee. I figured I could prop it on the edge of the conference table with the spigot facing toward me. Refills as and when required. Like an alcoholic behind a bar.
Reacher smiled. Bad luck and trouble, been my only friends.