Top 91 Quotes & Sayings by Max Brooks - Page 2

Fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe.

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.

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.

Of all the weapons discussed in this book, nothing is more important than your primary firearm. Keep it cleaned, keep it oiled, keep it loaded, keep it close. With a cool head, steady hand, and plenty of ammunition, one human is more than a match for an army of zombies.

We relinquished our freedom that day, and we were more than happy to see it go. From that moment on we lived in true freedom, the freedom to point to someone else and say “They told me to do it! It’s their fault, not mine.” The freedom, God help us, to say “I was only following orders.”-World War Z

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.

They were viewed very much like castles, I suppose: as crumbling, obsolete relics, with no real modern function other than as tourist attractions. But when the skies darkened and the nation called, both reawoke to the meaning of their existence. One shielded our bodies, the other, our souls.

The dead walk among us.

Any survival guide will tell you, don't buy a pair of combat boots before any disaster. They'll tear your feet up. Or water. Don't bring water with you because it'll tire you out and you'll lose too much fluid. Bring a water pump.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

There's a word for that kind of lie. Hope.

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

Whatever bro, tell it to the whales

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.

. . . show the other side, the one that gets people out of bed the next morning, makes them scratch and scrape and fight for their lives because someone is telling them that they're going to be okay.

Organize before they rise!

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

The dead walk among us. Zombies, ghouls-no matter what their label-these somnambulists are the greatest threat to humanity, other than humanity itself.

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.

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.

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.

With so much protection, wouldn't one be able to wander among the undead ranks, taunting them at will with no danger of repercussion?

Generation Z, they cleaned up their own mess.

When I was 16, the first book I ever actually purchased with my own money, in fact, and had read on my own time was "Hunt for Red October" by Tom Clancy...

They say great times make great men. I don't buy it. I saw a lot of weakness, a lot of filth. People who should have risen to the challenge and either couldn't or wouldn't. Greed, fear, stupidity and hate. I saw it before the war, I see it today. [...] I don't know if great times make great men, but I know they can kill them.