Alex Garland Quotes & Sayings

Moshe was a tall Israeli with an ear-splitting laugh. He used it in the same way as a madman uses a gun, spraying it around with bewildering randomness. Hearing the laugh made me blink instinctively, like hearing a hammer pound on brick or metal. Our conversation was impeded by having to watch him through the strobe effect of my convulsing eyes. — Alex Garland

transparent evasion exercises. — Alex Garland

I've never been to Comic-Con, but I'm certainly aware from this side of the Atlantic that it's a very important part of film marketing now, even when the films are not directly linked to a comic. — Alex Garland

An hour later we were walking past rows of busy beach huts and weaving between sunbathers and Frisbee games. I was surprised that people weren't taking more notice of us. Everyone looked so strange to me that I couldn't believe I didn't look equally strange to them. — Alex Garland

Ava's living area is made up of three primary spaces. — Alex Garland

Jed! I got stuck in some air pocket with more exits than ... " I couldn't think of anything famous with a large number of exits "I nearly drowned! — Alex Garland

Show people your stuff, listen carefully to their responses, but ultimately don't value anyone's opinion above your own. Be influenced by writers you dislike as well as writers you like. Read their stuff to figure out what's wrong. Find a balance between the confidence that allows you continue, and the self-critical facility that enables you to improve. Get the balance wrong on either side, and you're screwed. — Alex Garland

I didn't get the impression that the policeman cared much about the whole thing either. After another thirty minutes of ruthless interrogation ('Can you ve'fy you eat banan' pancake?') he let me go asking me not to leave Khao San within 24 hours — Alex Garland

Normally, small talk is enough for me to form an opinion of someone. I make quick judgments, often completely wrong, and then stick by them rigidly. — Alex Garland

I carry a lot of scars. I like the way that sounds. I carry a lot of scars. — Alex Garland

I've written original material before, where I've come up with the idea and the characters myself, and that's definitely very different to working with someone else's characters and stories. — Alex Garland

The first I heard of the beach was in Bangkok, on the Ko Sanh Road. — Alex Garland

You fish, swim, eat, laze around, and everyone's so friendly. It's such simple stuff, but ... If i could stop the world and restart life, put the clock back, i think I'd restart it like this. For everyone. — Alex Garland

Uh ... what can I say? Made money. Given a launch pad for a working life. Set a precedent I had no interest in following. Created expectations that I was not cut-out to match. Disappointed virtually all of my readers subsequently. But I like what I've done, and I stand by it all. — Alex Garland

Tourists went on holidays while travellers did something else. They travelled. — Alex Garland

The challenge is not to act automatically. It's to find an action that is not automatic. From painting, to breathing, to talking, to fucking. To falling in love ... — Alex Garland

When you develop an infatuation for someone you always find a reason to believe that this is exactly the person for you. It doesn't need to be a good reason. Taking photographs of the night sky, for example. Now, in the long run, that's just the kind of dumb, irritating habit that would cause you to split up. But in the haze of infatuation, it's just what you've been searching for all these years. — Alex Garland

I don't keep a travel diary. I did keep a travel diary once and it was a big mistake. All I remember of that trip is what I bothered to write down. Everything else slipped away, as though my mind felt jilted by my reliance on pen and paper. For exactly the same reason I don't travel with a camera. My holiday becomes the snapshots and anything I forget to record is lost. — Alex Garland

As for me ... I'm fine. I have bad dreams, but I never saw Mister Duck again. I play video games. I smoke a little dope. I got my thousand-yard stare. I carry a lot of scares. I like the way that sounds. I carry a lot of scares. — Alex Garland

The dilapidation was not a memory but a representation of a poorly remembered past. — Alex Garland

You wake, you die. — Alex Garland

When I was in college, I did a semester on AI theory. There was a thought experiment they gave us. It's called "Mary in the Black and White Room." Mary is a scientist, and her specialist subject is color. She knows everything there is to know about it. The wavelengths. The neurological effects. Every possible property that color can have. But she lives in a black and white room. She was born there and raised there. And she can only observe the outside world on a black and white monitor. And then one day someone opens the door. And Mary walks out. And she sees a blue sky. And at that moment, she learns something that all her studies couldn't tell her. She learns what it feels like to see color. — Alex Garland

Though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for I am the evilest motherfucker in the valley — Alex Garland

Personally I don't think there's any real intrinsic difference between comic books, movies, theatre, novels. I know there's sure to be some differences of some sorts. I've worked on novels, films, and video games, and in an adaptation, I guess one of the issues is that I have to be in love with the thing I'm adapting before I do it. So that can cause a problem. You can be too scared of it. You could be too reverential. But at the same time you want to try to capture this thing that you're obsessed by. You're fixated for a reason. What's the reason? You try to get ahold of it. — Alex Garland

On that trip I learnt something very important. Escape through travel works. Almost from the moment I boarded my flight, life in England became meaningless. Seat-belt signs lit up, problems switched off. Broken armrests took precedence over broken hearts. By the time the plane was airborne I'd forgotten England even existed. (The Beach) — Alex Garland

Of course witnessing poverty was the first to be ticked off the list. Then I had to graduate to the more obscure stuff. Being in a riot was something I pursued with a truly obsessive zeal, along with being tear-gassed and hearing gunshots fired in anger. — Alex Garland

I think everything I write is from an atheist perspective. I mean, it's partly from an atheist perspective because I'm an atheist, and I'm just not really interested in religious-based questions. — Alex Garland

Impulse. Response. Fluid. Imperfect. Patterned. Chaotic. — Alex Garland

Every dream that anyone ever has is theirs alone and they never manage to share it. And they never manage to remember it either. Not truly or accurately. Not as it was. Our memories and our vocabularies aren't up to the job. — Alex Garland

The thing about tourism is just that it's incredibly powerful. It's like a gun and it's incredibly easy to be irresponsible with it. And the speed of the impact that tourism can have on a place can be quite breathtaking. It doesn't take years, it takes months. That's how quickly it works. And it can be quite a bleak thing to witness. — Alex Garland

Escape through travel works. Almost from the moment I boarded my flight, life in England became meaningless. Seat-belt signs lit up, problems switched off. Broken armrests took precedence over broken hearts. By the time the plane was airborne I'd forgotten England even existed. — Alex Garland

He spoke in english. Not flawlessly by any means. Not like a Nazi POW camp commandant who appreciates english poetry and says things like 'you know, we are much alike, you and I I'. But good enough — Alex Garland

I don't like dealing with money transactions in poor countries. I get confused between the feeling that I shouldn't haggle with poverty and getting ripped off — Alex Garland

I do all this alone, everything I achieve, I achieve alone, because it's my head I'm locked into, and I share this space with nobody but myself. — Alex Garland

Trust me, it's paradise. This is where the hungry come to feed. For mine is the generation that travels the globe and searches for something we haven't tried before. So never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never fail to be polite & never outstay the welcome. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience - And if it hurts, you know what? It's probably worth it. — Alex Garland

It slightly depends on your perspective, sort of how you look at these things, but when I sit down to write a script, I'm not planning to write a script; I'm planning to make a film, and so I only see the script as being just a step there. — Alex Garland

There was nothing strange about it. Jed and i were on a covert mission. We had dinoculars, jungle, a quarry, a threat, the hidden presence of AK-47s and slanted eyes. The only missing element was a Doors soundtrack. — Alex Garland

If you look at the whole life of the planet, we - you know, Man - has only been around for a few blinks of an eye. So if the infection wipes us all out, that is a return to normality. — Alex Garland

When I see 'Sunshine,' I see a film that part of me is kind of very proud of and another part of me is very sad about, so it's a really complicated film for me. And I've never been really able to resolve all that in myself. — Alex Garland

Moshe was an Israeli with an ear-slitting laugh. He used it in the same way as a madman uses a gun, spraying it around with bewildering randomness. — Alex Garland

I remembered a few things about waking. I remembered the sense of surprise as dream life and waking life swapped primacy, and the way in which the most tangible and deeply involving dreams could bleach entirely away. — Alex Garland

That was longer than a heartbeat. — Alex Garland

I knew my affection for the Philippines was equally as telling: a democracy on paper, apparently well ordered, regularly subverted by irrational chaos. A place where I'd felt instantly at home. — Alex Garland

Maybe to have a memory you need time for reflection, however brief, just to let the memory find a place to settle. — Alex Garland

Well, if there's an infinite amount of chances for something to happen, then eventually it will happen - no matter how small the likelihood. — Alex Garland

You learn about me, and I learn nothing about you. That's not a foundation on which friendships are based. — Alex Garland

Waking was the most reliable part of a dream, as built into dreams as death is to life. You dream, you wake: you live, you die. — Alex Garland

If I'd learnt one thing from travelling, it was that the way to get things done was to go ahead and do them. Don't talk about going to Borneo. Book a ticket, get a visa, pack a bag, and it just happens. — Alex Garland

There's this saying: in an all-blue world, colour doesn't exist ... If something seems strange, you question it; but if the outside world is too distant to use as a comparison then nothing seems strange. — Alex Garland

Dream life, I realized, was only confusing when you were awake. It was from the perspective of waking life that dream life seemed fractured and lacking consequence, lacking any certainty that one thing led to another. But from within dream life, the world was generally coherent. Not exactly an unconfusing world-just no more confusing than any other. — Alex Garland

I wrote a whole novel before The Beach. Unpublishable. Junk. But, for some reason I stuck at novels and wrote a second. Still not sure why I didn't give up. Stubborn, maybe. — Alex Garland

The success that comes from my books is not something I feel very comfortable with. Past a certain point you have to accept the idea that the success is a lot to do with the timing and luck and that divorces you from it massively. There are aspects of it that I haven't got used to at all. But I've enjoyed some parts of it massively. It relates to the same reason I did a lot of backpacking - partly for the experience - it's something to tell my grandkids. It's a weird chain of events to have in your life. — Alex Garland

There are one hundred glow-stars on my bedroom ceiling. ( ... ) Glow-stars are strange. They make the ceiling disappear. — Alex Garland

I did keep a travel diary once and it was a big mistake. All I remember of that trip is what I bothered to write down. — Alex Garland

Vietnam, me love you long time. All day, all night, me love you long time.
( ... )
Dropping acid on the Mekong Delta, smoking grass through a rifle barrel, flying on a helicopter with opera blasting out of loudspeakers, tracer-fire and paddy-field scenery, the smell of napalm in the morning.
Long time. — Alex Garland