The Philosophy of Jack Reacher

Papa B serves some Lee Child.

Eat when you can because you never know when the next chance will be.

Sleep when you can so you won’t need to when you can’t.

Don’t mess with the special investigators.

Don’t own anything that doesn’t fit in your pockets.

Buy new clothes and throw old ones away rather than wash and keep them.

Carry your passport.

Think like them; feel like them; be them.

We investigate, we prepare, we execute. WE find them, we take them down and then we piss on their ancestors' graves.

The more we know, the luckier we get.

His life and his history lacked many things. He had never known stability or normality or comfort or convention. He had never counted on anything except surprise and unpredictability and danger. He took things exactly as they came, for exactly what they were.

“I don’t make plans, Karla.”

Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

“Do you ever get afraid?” “No, I get mad. Not at myself for being afraid…I got mad at the things for making me afraid.”

Back to the wall. All exits in view, if possible.

One advantage of being ex-military was almost any place was serviceable. There was always somewhere worse to compare it to.

“I like cockroaches better than those people.. they are just little packets of DNA scuttling around, doing what they have to do. Walker and his buddies didn’t have to do what they did. They had a choice. They could have been upstanding human beings. But they chose not to be…So, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.”

He had never really lived anywhere. That was the defining feature of his life. It made him what he was.

He owed no money. He had never stolen anything, never cheated anybody. Never fathered any children. He was on as few pieces of paper as it was possible for a human being to get.

He was pretty sure he didn’t want to live in a house. The desire had just passed him by. The necessary involvement intimidated him. It was a physical weight, like the suitcase in his hand.

He had never known stability, he had never completed a year in the same school, he had never worked nine to five, Monday to Friday, he had never counted on anything at all except surprise and unpredictability.

He had developed a habit of buying new stuff instead of washing the old stuff. It defended him against carrying any kind of big valise and it defended him against learning the techniques of laundering.

One: “I have never seen a pack that stayed together after the first few heads hit the pavement.”
Two: “An unprovoked head butt is like bringing a sawed-off shotgun to a knife fight.”
Three: “Most guys who don’t check new equipment are alive, but by no means all of them.”
Four: “All you need, and nothing you don’t.”

Tom Cruise? Are you f'in kidding me?