“Evaluate. Long experience had taught me to evaluate and assess. When the unexpected gets dumped on you, don’t waste time. Don’t figure out how or why it happened. Don’t recriminate. Don’t figure out whose fault it is. Don’t work out how to avoid the same mistake next time. All of that you do later. If you survive.”

“Enough, a person might say, if that person lived in the civilized world, the world of movies and television and fair play and decent restraint. But Reacher didn’t live there. He lived in a world where you don’t start fights but you sure as hell finish them, and you don’t lose them either, and he was the inheritor of generations of hard-won wisdom that said the best way to lose them was to assume they were over when they weren’t yet.”

“To fill a small bag means selecting,and choosing, and evaluating. There's no logicial end to that process. Pretty soon I would have a big bag, and then two or three. A month later I'd be like the rest of you.”

“Thurman asked, “Are you born again?”Reacher said, “Once was enough for me.”“I’m serious.”“So am I.”“You should think about it.”“My father used to say, ‘Why be born again when you can just grow up?’”“Is he no longer with us?”“He died a long time ago.”“He’s in the other place then, with an attitude like that.”“He’s in a hole in the ground in Arlington Cemetery.”“Another veteran?”“Marine.”“Thank you for his service.”“Don’t thank me, I had nothing to do with it.”Thurman said, “You should think about getting your life in order, you know, before it’s too late. Something might happen. The Book of Revelations says ‘The time is at hand.’”“As it has every day since it was written nearly 2000 years ago. Why would it be true now, when it wasn’t before?”“There are signs,” Thurman said, “And the possibility of precipitating events.”He said it primly and smugly, and with a degree of certainty, as if he had regular access to privilieged, insider information. Reacher said nothing in reply.They drove on past a small group of tired men, wrestling with a mountain of tangled steel. Their backs were bent and their shoulders were slumped. Not yet 8 o’clock in the morning, Reacher thought. More than 10 hours still to go.“God watches over them.”“You sure?”“He tells me so.”“Does he watch over you, too?”“He knows what I do.”“Does he approve?”“He tells me so.”“Then why is there a lightning rod on your church?”

“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.”

“Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”

“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”