Seven thirty-nine, more than three hundred miles to the north and east, Jack Reacher climbed out of his motel room window. One minute earlier, he had been in the bathroom, brushing his teeth. One minute before that, he had opened the door of his room to check the morning temperature. He had left it open, and the closet just inside the entrance passageway was faced with mirrored glass, and there was a shaving mirror in the bathroom on a cantilevered arm, and by a freak of optical chance he caught sight of four men getting out of a car and walking toward the motel office. Pure luck, but a guy as vigilant as Jack Reacher gets lucky more times than the average.
--
Echo Burning, Ch. 1 (2001)Lee Child
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. Not that the waiter was slow. Just that the move was slick. So slick, Reacher had no idea what he was watching. It was just an urban scene, repeated everywhere in the world a billion times a day: A guy unlocked a car and got in and drove away. That was all. But that was enough.
Lee Child
I got out of the bathroom of course. I locked the front door and pushed the big wardrobe up against the bathroom door. I thought it'd be good to be careful. A little too late, maybe.
I'm not leaving my apartment. I'm not gonna give it away. No. There's no reason I should.
The noise from the bathroom was the shattering of my porcelain toilet bowl.
They're in the bathroom. A lot. There's a lot of them. A bunch of sniffling snouts. A bunch of rats.
They're already chewing the wardrobe. I'm standing in my room, listening to their swarming.
Thousands of rats, in my apartment. All of them gnawing. I wait. Wait for them to get in. They'll be in here soon. It won't be long.
They're coming. Rats. My rats.
I'm waiting. What else can I do?Andras Petocz
Don't ever get between a pregnant woman and the bathroom door; it don't matter if the sister's saved, she'll hurt you in Jesus' name! She'll be saying <nowiki'</nowiki>I pray for you in a minute.'
Mike Warnke
Reacher hated turning back. He liked to press on, dead ahead, whatever. Everyone's life needed an organizing principle, and relentless forward motion was Reacher's.
Lee Child
[In response to this question by Bill Moyers: What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?] "It's going to destroy it all. I use what I call my bathroom metaphor. If two people live in an apartment, and there are two bathrooms, then both have what I call freedom of the bathroom, go to the bathroom any time you want, and stay as long as you want to for whatever you need. And this to my way is ideal. And everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom. It should be right there in the Constitution. But if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up, you have to set up times for each person, you have to bang at the door, aren't you through yet, and so on. And in the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies.
Isaac Asimov
Child, Lee
Child, Lydia Maria
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