Lee Child Quotes

Adaptation is one of the great advantages to being born and bred in Jersey. We're simply not bested by bad air or tainted water. We're like that catfish with lungs. Take us out of our environment and we can grow whatever body parts we need to survive. After Jersey the rest of the country's a piece of cake. You want to send someone into a fallout zone? Get him from Jersey. He'll be fine.

New York is a place that can grind you down and spit you out. A true New Yorker doesn't get ground down - he gets polished.

I was very much a tough New York street kid. I went to a school where you had to learn how to get along with everybody or fight with everybody, and I did my fair share of both. But you have to learn how to get along. I did an awful lot of fighting. I was tough, but I'm also relatively small, so I learned very early on to use my mind.

Thanks to my training in Balali village, I am rough and tough.

A simple leather jacket... has gotten me through cocktail parties in New York and cold nights in Afghanistan.

I'm a survivalist and a survivor.

Military brats have this toughness: they're almost like orphans or foster children; they develop little mechanisms. It sets you up to look at things a little differently.

Success is survival.

It's the way of life in Saginaw. If you're not tough, you don't survive.

My strength of character is a privilege. I can do anything to survive. I don't break easily.

I can pretty much take anything that comes at me.

Resilience is distinct from mere survival, and more than mere endurance. Resilience is often endurance with direction.

A cactus doesn't live in the desert because it likes the desert; it lives there because the desert hasn't killed it yet.

People in Colorado are resilient.

I've always just been this hairy, wild man.

It was never a thing that bothered me, being cold or if there's snow. It never fazed me.

I'm from the hood. You put me in a rough neighborhood and believe me, I'm OK.

Resilience can go an awful long way.

I roll with the punches.

I guess I just have really tough skin.

I'm just going to do what I can do, not worry about taking hits. I'm not going to shy away from that... I'm going to try to protect myself and make sure I do my job.

I think there are things you can do to toughen yourself up.

You couldn't play if you weren't tough. You'd get bullied. Everybody who comes through the Civitan Recreation Center has to be tough. It's what we breed.

All this could go tomorrow, and I would still know how to function, because I never had nothing before. I went through the struggle - it was a rough life.