Matthew Reilly Quotes

what would Scarecrow do!

The problem, as I see it, are the twin human creations of marriage and religion. It is marriage and religion that make copulation complex and hurtful. Marriage brings up notions of trust, cuckoldry and ownership, while religion makes certain kinds of intimacy sinful.

Mother yelled, 'Christ, this is the craziest snatch'n'grab I've ever seen!'
'It's desperation over style, Mother.' He hurried over to the tail end of the suspended tanker truck, to the two cables that rose up from it to the rim of the massive moat.
'But did you have to destroy everything?' she shouted.
'I haven't destroyed everything yet. Hurry up, this isn't over! This way!

His actions had saved three US cities from annihilation but only a few very high-ranking people knew it. Fairfax was just pleased he could still wear jeans and sneakers to work.

Zoos have always fascinated me. What child hasn't wondered what would happen if all the animals escaped from the zoo? Or what would happen if they got caught in an enclosure?

A monster movie is only as good as the monster in it.

You'd be surprised, you can do a lot more damage with your brains than with your fists.

Why buy books when you can read them online

What I do is write books for an audience that thinks in a movie language. That's the way I think, and I also believe that not enough authors keep up with the audience.

Come not between the dragon and his wrath. - William Shakespeare King Lear

There's an Oriental saying I like: If aggression meets empty space it tends to defeat itself.

I've been around long enough now that people who don't get into the outrageousness, the over-the-top stuff, they know not to buy my books anymore.

So it is with Moslem women and their veils,' Michelangelo said. 'When they saw Muhammad's wives wearing veils, they sought to imitate them, and so now nearly all Islamic women wear veils even though there is no stipulation in their Holy Koran that they do so.

Sometimes you had to make the animals perform.

I snorted. 'For a great sultan who is lord and ruler of all that he surveys, his English is lamentably poor. He can't even spell England properly.'
Still holding the note, Mr Ascham looked up at me. 'Is that so? Tell me, Bess, do you speak his language? Any Arabic or Turkish-Arabic?'
'You know that I do not.'
'Then however lamentable his English may be, he still speaks your language while you cannot speak his. To me, this gives him a considerable advantage over you. Always pause before you criticise, and never unduly criticise one who has made an effort at something you yourself have not even attempted.

There is no such thing as an "aspiring writer". You are a writer. Period.

My first book, 'Contest,' had a guy fighting aliens in the New York Public Library. The second book, 'Ice Station,' and 'Temple' were present-day military thrillers.

One of the things I have come up against time and again in my career is the notion that because a book is easy to read it was somehow easy to write.

A friend's loyalty lasts longer than their memory. Over the course of a long friendship, you might fight with your friend, even get angry with them. But a true friend will forget that anger after a while, because their loyalty to their friend outweighs the memory of the disagreement.

I read 'The Hobbit' only when I was an adult. I had a lot of friends, teenagers, who discovered reading through 'The Hobbit,' but it wasn't something that I discovered until later in life.

Fantasy enabled me to break the shackles and create a whole new level of 'the world is in danger' stakes.

Human fears are very often irrational constructs of the mind.

You don't like people?" Raf asked. "I don't like what people do to each other.

What people do in the name of religion is not necessarily religious. It often has baser reasons behind it.

I think 'The Time Traveler's Wife' is one of the most brilliantly marketed books I have ever seen.

Yo. Salt-and-Pepper. The name is Go-Go or Mr Go-Go, okay?

I imagine I'm a very unusual guy to date. You know, I've got toys on the shelves, and I've got the cars.

I wasn't one of those kids who dreamed of writing novels when I was 8 or 12. I wanted to be a film director. I wanted to make big action movies. I loved movies like 'Die Hard,' 'Predator,' 'Aliens,' 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.'

The airliner-sized dragon blew apart in a monumental spray of blood and pulp. Great chunks of flesh the size of boulders rained down from the sky.
"The empire is striking back," Ambassador Syme observed, peering out the window beside CJ.

Are you a doctor?" Li said.
"I'm better than that. I'm a vet. Vets do everything: brain surgery, heart surgery, lab analysis, dislocations –

In 'Seven Ancient Wonders,' Jack West and his team break someone out of Guantanamo Bay. I'm not going to preach to people and say, 'Guantanamo Bay, bad', but I will have my hero go and break somebody out of it, and maybe people will think about it that way.

Myths arise from actual events, remarkable events that get talked about precisely because they are remarkable and which then get embellished in the retelling.

mmmm, space stuff

In so many ways, Ascham thought, she was beyond her years - but in the presence of her father she became a little girl again. So confident and assured in private, now she moved with the stilted awkwardness of every twelve-year-old girl. Ascham's heart went out to her.

I have both held and beheld unlimited power and of it I know but one thing. It drives men mad.'
- Alexander the Great

The Legend of the Dragon Fairytales cleanse and sanitise what were once true stories. In fairytales, knights are chivalrous, clean-shaven and wear shining armour - when in truth they were swarthy, filthy rapists and thugs. Castles are bright and gay when in truth they were grim fortresses. If dragons were real, then in all likelihood they were not graceful, high-chested, noble creatures; rather they would have been dirty, ugly, reptilian and mean. From: The Power of Myth by Craig Ferguson (Momentum, Sydney, 2013)

He began to understand why some people feared the dark so much. The sheer helplessness of not knowing what was right in front of you was terrifying.

I write about all manner of things: a guy fighting aliens in the New York State Library, Antarctica, Inca civilization in Peru, the Great Pyramid at Giza, and people often ask me, where do I get these ideas from? They come from reading widely, watching a lot of documentaries, and increasingly ,as I was able to, travelling around the world.