Max Brooks Quotes & Sayings

If your Soviet neighbor is trying to set fire to your house, you can't be worrying about the Arab down the block. If suddenly it's the Arab in your backyard , you can't be worrying about the People's Republic of China and if one day the ChiComs show up at your front door with an eviction notice in one hand and a Molotov cocktail in the other, then the last thing you're going do is look over his shoulder for a walking corpse. — Max Brooks

The bottom line is I'm a slow zombie guy - I'm always a slow zombie guy but I also know I'm in the minority. — Max Brooks

You can tell everything about a person by what happens when he opens his mouth. — Max Brooks

Lies are neither bad nor good. Like a fire they can either keep you warm or burn you to death, depending on how they're used. — Max Brooks

The monkey didn't help matters any. He was sitting on top of the microbus, just watching the undead plunge to their end. His face appeared so serene, so intelligent, as if he truly understood the situation. I almost wanted him to turn to me and say, 'This is the turning point of the war! We've finally stopped them! We're finally safe!' But instead his little penis popped out and he peed in my face. — Max Brooks

Zombie books were going to be my passion projects, but certainly not pay the bills. I thought I was going to have to get a real job on a sitcom or something, and have my zombie books to remind myself I was still a writer at heart. I never thought I could actually pay my bills and write what I wanted. — Max Brooks

I'm not going to say the war was a good thing. I'm not that much of a sick fuck, but you've got to admit that it did bring people together. — Max Brooks

Use your head; cut off theirs. — Max Brooks

Sometimes you find your path, sometimes it finds you. — Max Brooks

Often, a school is your best bet-perhaps not for education but certainly for protection from an undead attack. — Max Brooks

You can't blame anyone else ... You have to make your own choices and live every agonizing day with the consequences of those choices. He knew this. That's why he deserted us like we deserted those civilians. He saw the road ahead, a steep, treacherous mountain road. We'd all have to hike that road, each of us dragging the boulder of what we'd done behind us. He couldn't do it. He couldn't shoulder the weight. - Philip Adler — Max Brooks

So you never really tried to solve the problem.
Oh, c'mon. Can you ever "solve" poverty? Can you ever "solve" crime? Can you ever "solve" disease, unemployment, war, or any other societal herpes? Hell no. All you can hope for is to make them manageable enough to allow people to get on with their lives. That's not cynicism, that's maturity. You can't stop the rain. All you can do is just build a roof that you hope won't leak, or at least won't leak on the people who are gonna vote for you.
What does that mean?
C'mon ...
Seriously. What does that mean?
Fine, whatever, "Mister Smith goes to motherfuckin' Washington," it means that, in politics, you focus on the needs of your power base. Keep them happy, and they keep you in office. — Max Brooks

We live in such a service-based, globalised economy where very few people actually make anything and the people who do make stuff ... it's all part of a massive global supply chain. So what if all those chains were suddenly cut, how would you make something? How would you keep people alive? And that was something I wanted to explore. — Max Brooks

Happy but isn't the human factor what connexus a deeply to our past will future generations care as much for chronologies and casualty statistics as they would for the personal accounts of individuals not so different from themselves. — Max Brooks

Organize before they rise! — Max Brooks

Americans worship technology. It's an inherent trait in the national zeitgeist. — Max Brooks

It's ironic that the only way to kill a zombie is to destroy its brain, because, as a group, they have no collective brain to speak of. There was no leadership, no chain of command, no communication or cooperation on any level. There was no president to assassinate, no HQ bunker to surgically strike. Each zombie is its own, self-contained, automated unit, and this last advantage is what truly encapsulates the entire conflict. — Max Brooks

To know is always better, no matter what the answer might be. — Max Brooks

[ ... ]you don't have to be Sun freakin Tzu to know that real fighting isn't about killing or even hurting the other guy, it's about scaring him enough to call it a day. — Max Brooks

Most people don't believe something can happen until it already has. That's not stupidity or weakness, that's just human nature. — Max Brooks

The book of war, the one we've been writing since one ape slapped another, was completely useless in this situation. We had to write a new one from scratch. — Max Brooks

Our country only exists because people believed in it, and if it wasn't strong enough to protect us from this crisis, then what future could it ever hope to have? — Max Brooks

Only rule that ever made sense to me I learned from a history, not an economics, professor at Wharton. "Fear," he used to say, "fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe. — Max Brooks

You can't stop the rain. All you can do is just build a roof that you hope won't leak, or at least won't leak on the people who are gonna vote for you. — Max Brooks

During the Qin Dynasty, all books not relating to practical concerns
such as agriculture or construction were ordered burned by the
emperor to guard against "dangerous thought." Whether accounts of
zombie attacks perished in the flames will never be known. This
obscure section of a medical manuscript, preserved in the wall of an
executed Chinese scholar, might be proof of such attacks. — Max Brooks

But there were alternative media outlets. Oh sure, and you know who listens to them? Pansy, overeducated know-it-alls, and you know who listens to them? Nobody! Who's going to care about some PBS-NPR fringe minority that's out of touch with the mainstream? The more those elitist eggheads shouted "The Dead Are Walking," the more most real Americans tuned them out. — Max Brooks

Do you understand economics? I mean big-time, prewar, global capitalism. Do you get how it worked? I don't, and anyone who says they do is full of shit. — Max Brooks

We've been at peace about as long as e were at war. — Max Brooks

Armies perfect the art of fighting the last war just in time for the next one. — Max Brooks

You can watch 'Dawn of the Dead' and still sleep at night. Try that with 'The Day After'. — Max Brooks

I think 'G.I. Joe' is a perfect example of how I'm the world's worst businessman. If I were smart, I'd be writing 'World War Z Part 12', but I have to go where the muse leads, and I've always been a huge 'G.I. Joe' fan. I always wanted to know more about these characters, these little plastic figures I played with as a kid. — Max Brooks

[Kwang Jingshu was arrested by the MSS and incarcerated without formal — Max Brooks

If I thought there was any hope of turning 'World War Z' into a movie, I wouldn't have written it as a giant, epic, global story, because that requires a giant, epic, global budget. — Max Brooks

It's a lot easier to blow up trains than to make them run on time. — Max Brooks

Zombies will try to scale any surface no matter how unfeasable or even impossible. In all but the easiest situations, these attempts have met with failure. Even in the case of ladders, when simple hand-over-hand coordination is required, only one in four zombies will succeed. — Max Brooks

We lost a hell of a lot more than just people when we abandoned them to the dead. — Max Brooks

I actually wrote my first zombie book way before I got the job on 'Saturday Night Live.' — Max Brooks

I think the general anxiety of the 1960s - '70s spawned our interest in the living dead. When people worry about the end of their world, they need a safe vessel for all their fears. Zombies provide that vessel because they're 'safe.' — Max Brooks

To even call them "units" is a joke. These were just mobs of men in uniforms, clerks — Max Brooks

Can you ever "solve" poverty? Can you ever "solve" crime? Can you ever "solve" disease, unemployment, war, or any other societal herpes? Hell no. — Max Brooks

The truth was, neither the Central Intelligence Agency nor any of the other official and unofficial U.S. intelligence organizations have ever been some kind of all-seeing, all-knowing, global illuminati. For starters, we never hand that kind of funding. — Max Brooks

1. Organize before they rise!
2. They feel no fear, why should you?
3. Use your head: cut off theirs.
4. Blades don't need reloading.
5. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair.
6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it.
7. Get out of the car, get onto the bike.
8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert!
9. No place is safe, only safer.
10. The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on. — Max Brooks

You assume things, like whatever country has more firepower wins the wars, and that's actually not true at all. — Max Brooks

Personally, I could have cared less. — Max Brooks

The official report was a collection of cold, hard data, an objective "after-action report" that would allow future generations to study the events of that apocalyptic decade without being influenced by the "human factor." But isn't the human factor what connects us so deeply to our past? Will future generations care as much for chronologies and casualty statistics as they would for the personal accounts of individuals not so different from themeslves? By excluding the human factor, aren't we risking the kind of personal detachment from a history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? — Max Brooks

You can't blame anyone else, ... , no one but yourself. You have to make your own choices and live every agonizing day with the consequences of those choices. — Max Brooks

But no matter what happens to the surviving humans, there will always be the walking dead. — Max Brooks

I can't tell you if this is the right path; the future is too mountainous to see to far ahead ... Only 'the gods' know what awaits us at its end. — Max Brooks

If I knew anything about what people wanted and was popular, I'd still be writing for 'Saturday Night Live'. I can only write what I want, and hopefully people will like it. — Max Brooks

There comes a point when you have to realize that the sum of all your blood, sweat, and tears will ultimately amount to zero. — Max Brooks

From that moment on we lived in true freedom, the freedom to point to someone else and They told me to do it! It's their fault, not mine. — Max Brooks

I'm not a horror fan. I'm an anti-horror fan. I think horror fans feel deep down in the pit of their souls, they feel safe, and therefore bored. And therefore they want to be scared. — Max Brooks

Zombies don't run. They don't dance. They don't say, "More brains." There is no Thriller Night. Those are stereotypes that are perpetrated by Hollywood, which I think is very irresponsible because it can get you killed. — Max Brooks

And that bastard Breckinridge Scott, yes, the Phalanx king, still hiding like a rat in his Antarctic Fortress of Scumditude.
Arthur Sinclair — Max Brooks

PARNELL AIR NATIONAL GUARD BASE, TENNESSEE — Max Brooks

Why would I want to get depressed by watching TV? I could do that just by stepping on the scale every morning. — Max Brooks

Jesus, you'd think the Black Death was sweeping the globe every three months or so ... ebola, SARS, avian flu. You know how many people made money on those scares? Shit, I made my first million on useless antiradiation pills during dirty bomb scares. — Max Brooks

It was me, only me. Self-contained, self-reliant, and always, unquestionably self-assured. — Max Brooks

Going for the brain.
[He chuckles.] We talk about it today as if it is some feat of magic, like holy water or a silver bullet, but why wouldn't destruction of the brain be the only way to annihilate these creatures? Isn't it the only way to annihilate us as well?
You mean human beings?
[He nods.] Isn't that all we are? Just a brain kept alive by a complex and vulnerable machine we call the body? The brain cannot survive if just one part of the machine is destroyed or even deprived of such necessities as food or oxygen. That is the only measurable difference between us and "The Undead." Their brains do not require a support system to survive, so it is necessary to attack the organ itself. — Max Brooks

I remember I used to come up to my teacher crying because I couldn't read. She would say: 'You can do this. You just don't want to do this.' — Max Brooks

History has proven that a well-trained individual, with nothing but a rock, has a better chance of survival than a novice with the latest technological marvel. — Max Brooks

If you believe you can accomplish everything by "cramming" at the eleventh hour, by all means, don't lift a finger now. But you may think twice about beginning to build your ark once it has already started raining — Max Brooks

And, let us not forget, the culmination of nearly five thousand years of continuous Chinese history. — Max Brooks

What are you seeing? people selling their products? No. People selling the fear of you having to live without their product — Max Brooks

I wanted to serve. It was Desert Storm. I thought, 'I was a rich kid, and America's been good to me.' — Max Brooks

When I read Frank Miller's 'The Dark Knight Returns', I think it's a wonderful record of the Reagan era. I think it's amazing. This is the time I lived in. — Max Brooks

What we did, what every president since Washington has done, was provide a measured, appropriate response, in direct relation to a realistic threat assessment. — Max Brooks

Zombies are so popular. There's a lot of chaff out there. For every one person who is legitimately passionate about zombies, there are a hundred people who are thinking, 'Hey, I can make a buck off of this.' The problem is that some of their stuff is so lame. — Max Brooks

Remember; no matter how desperate the situation seems, time spent
thinking clearly is never time wasted. — Max Brooks

That's the thing about zombies. They don't adapt and they don't think. Literally, you could have a zombie on one side of a chain link fence and you could be on the other side and they could be trying to get to you and six feet down could be an open door and they will not go through that door in the fence. That's why they're so scary. — Max Brooks

This space station [Yang Liwei] was little more than a giant Orbital Denial Station. If those charges were to detonate, the debris ... any future space launch would be grounded for years. It was a "Scorched Space" policy. "If we can't have it, neither can anyone else. — Max Brooks

Whatever bro, tell it to the whales — Max Brooks

After all we'd been through, we still couldn't take our heads from out of our asses or our hands from around each other's throats. — Max Brooks

The majority of them simply melted into the host country's underbelly.
The low-income areas?
If that's what you want to call them. What better place to hide than among that part of society that no one else even wants to acknowledge. How else could so many outbreaks have started in so many First World ghettos? — Max Brooks

Survival is the key word to remember - not victory, not conquest, just survival. — Max Brooks

Yes, there was racism, but there was also classism. You're a high-powered corporate attorney. You've spent most of your life reviewing contracts, brokering deals, talking on the phone. That's what you're good at, that's what made you rich and what allowed you to hire a plumber to fix your toilet, which allowed you to keep talking on the phone. The more work you do, the more money you make, the more peons you hire to free you up to make more money. That's the way the world works. But one day it doesn't. No one needs a contract reviewed or a deal brokered. What it does need is toilets fixed. And suddenly that peon is your teacher, maybe even your boss. For some, this was scarier than the living dead. — Max Brooks

Only one could have foreseen this, and I don't believe in him anymore. — Max Brooks

Public support must be husbanded as a finite national resource. It must be spent wisely, sparingly, and with the greatest return on your investment. — Max Brooks

The dead walk among us. — Max Brooks

When this engineer, Sergeant Mukherjee, grabbed me by the arm — Max Brooks

The first casualty of the conflict must be our own sentimentality — Max Brooks

Ignorance was the enemy. Lies and superstition, misinformation, disinformation. Sometimes, no information at all. Ignorance killed billions of people. Ignorance caused the Zombie War. — Max Brooks

North Koreans were indoctrinated from birth to believe that their lives were meaningless, that they existed only to serve the State, the Revolution, and the Great Leader. — Max Brooks

Zombies are apocalyptic in nature. They belong to a class of monster that doesn't just hunt humans, but seeks to obliterate that entire human race. — Max Brooks

You ever hear about that experiment an American journalist did in Moscow in the 1970s? He just lined up at some building, nothing special about it, just a random door. Sure enough, someone got in line behind him, then a couple more, and before you knew it, they were backed up around the block. No one asked what the line was for. They just assumed it was worth it. I can't say if that story was true. Maybe it's an urban legend, or a cold war myth. Who knows? — Max Brooks

The only rule that ever made sense to me I learned from a history, not an economics, professor at Wharton. "Fear," he used to say, "fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe." That blew me away. "Turn on the TV," he'd say. "What are you seeing? People selling their products? No. People selling the fear of you having to live without their products." Fuckin' A, was he right. Fear of aging, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear of failure. Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells. — Max Brooks

If you can fight,fight,help each other, be prepared for anything. — Max Brooks

When I started writing, there was nothing about zombies. It was all teen movies, which to me are scarier than zombies, but that's another story. — Max Brooks

There comes a point where emotions must give way to objective facts. — Max Brooks

Looking back, I still can't believe how unprofessional the news media was. So much spin, so few hard facts. All those digestible sound bites from an army of 'experts' all contradicting one another, all trying to seem more 'shocking' and 'in-depth' than the last one. It was all so confusing, nobody seemed to know what to do. — Max Brooks

But isn't the human factor what connects us so deeply to our past? — Max Brooks

Gu was a worrier, a neurotic curmudgeon. If he had a headache, it was a brain tumor; if it looked like rain, this year's harvest was ruined. This was his way of controlling the situation, his lifelong strategy for always coming out ahead. Now, when reality looked more dire than any of his fatalisitic predictions, he had no choice but to turn tail and charge in the opposite direction. — Max Brooks

Unlike the escapee, your team of hunters will be out during the brightest, hottest, most excruciating part of the day. Make sure each hunter is well supplied with water and antisunstroke accessories. — Max Brooks

I wrote 'The Zombie Survival Guide' because I wanted to read it, and nobody else was writing it. All I've been doing with everything I've written is answering questions that I had. — Max Brooks

Can you ever "solve" disease, unemployment, war, or any other societal herpes? Hell no. All you can hope for is to make them manageable enough to allow people to get on with their lives. That's not cynicism, that's maturity. — Max Brooks

Since 2001, people have been scared. There's been some really scary stuff that's been happening - 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, anthrax letters, D.C. sniper, global warming, global financial meltdown, bird flu, swine flu, SARS. I think people really feel like the system's breaking down. — Max Brooks

I think that most people would rather face the light of a real enemy than the darkness of their imagined fears. — Max Brooks

The monsters that rose from the dead, they are nothing compared to the ones we carry in our hearts — Max Brooks

Looking for love on the internet is like Janet Leigh asking Norman Bates if he likes her body. — Max Brooks

Joy, sadness, confidence, anxiety, love, hatred, fear-all of these feelings and thousands more that make up the human "heart" are as useless to the living dead as the organ of the same name. Who knows if this is humanity's greatest weakness or strength? The debate continues, and probably will forever. — Max Brooks