Home > Work > Bad Luck and Trouble (Jack Reacher, #11)
1 " Now they broke my toothbrush, I don't own anything. "
― Lee Child , Bad Luck and Trouble (Jack Reacher, #11)
2 " 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. "
3 " You do not mess with the special investigators. "
4 " Time to shit or get off the pot. "
5 " We investigate, we prepare, we execute. We find them, we take them down, and then we piss on their ancestors’ graves. "
6 " You tell a lot of lies, Ms. Berenson,” he said. Berenson said nothing. Neagley said, “She’s Human Resources. It’s what they do. "
7 " Facts were to be faced, not fought. "
8 " Handguns were in-room weapons. Under expert control in high-pressure situations the average range for a successful engagement was about eleven feet. "
9 " a yard and left, Dave,” he said. O’Donnell was like a blind man. His eyes were tight on the two guys "
10 " Hence 8197. He liked 97 because it was the largest two-digit prime number, and he loved 81 because it was absolutely the only number out of all the literally infinite possibilities whose square root was also the sum of its digits. Square root of eighty-one was nine, and eight and one made nine. No other nontrivial number in the cosmos had that kind of sweet symmetry. Perfect. "
11 " So like I said, what are you running from?” “From being like people, I guess. "
12 " Especially about how hard it was for ex-military people. They entered the civilian world with all the wrong assumptions. They expected the same kind of certainties they had known before. The straightforwardness, the transparency, the honesty, the shared sacrifice. "
13 " 103 and the even more basic 2 and 515. So, 1030. A thousand and thirty. A mistake. Maybe. Or, maybe not a mistake. Reacher took fifty dollars from the machine and dug in his pocket for change and went in "
14 " in search of a pay phone. He found a phone inside the bus depot. He dialed his bank’s number from memory. Nine-forty in the West, twelve-forty in the East. Lunch time in Virginia, but someone should be there. "
15 " in LA she would hole up. Back in the day it had been part of his job to find people, and he had been pretty good at it. Success depended on "
16 " Tony Swan, Jorge Sanchez, Calvin Franz, Frances Neagley, Stanley Lowrey, Manuel Orozco, David O’Donnell, and Karla Dixon. "
17 " second rule, learned from a lifetime of bad luck and trouble: Maintain a little dignity. "
18 " Hope for the best.’ ‘But plan for the worst. "
19 " Alaska Airlines would have been cheaper, but Reacher hated Alaska Airlines. They put a scripture card on their meal trays. Ruined his appetite. "
20 " The unit had organized itself like a small-market baseball team enjoying an unlikely pennant run: talented journeymen working together, no stars, no egos, mutually supportive, and above all ruthlessly and relentlessly effective. "
