Matthew Reilly Quotes

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

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

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.

mmmm, space stuff

what would Scarecrow do!

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

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.

Hamish shrugged. “It’s all pretty cool and impressive … if you never saw fucking Jurassic Park.

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

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.

You don’t like people?” Raf asked. “I don’t like what people do to each other.

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.

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.

Holy shit, she thought. The dragons are throwing cars at me!

Convincing someone to believe something that was inherently unbelievable often meant getting that person to make a quick and easy comparison to something they already knew.

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

We didn’t come this far just to come this far

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!

Human fears are very often irrational constructs of the mind.

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.

Over twenty men died during the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, Dr Lynch. Does anyone regret that? No, all anyone sees is a marvel of its time, a great achievement in human ingenuity.

I don’t save the world for glory or power. I have neither and I don’t care for them. In fact, I quite like it that the world doesn’t know my name. I just do what I do for the people I love.

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 –

To anyone who knows a writer, never underestimate the power of your encouragement.

Many humans live their entire lives without questioning the ‘truths’ they’ve been told.

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.

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.

The man who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself. —Friedrich Nietzsche

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

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.

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

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

Why buy books when you can read them online

That’s not the whole of it. As with many other faiths—including our own Christian one—a small group of zealots have distorted Islam to further their own agenda. When many women took to imitating the fashions of the Prophet’s wives, some Moslem men saw an opportunity to put all women under their thumb. They espoused foul laws like those allowing a man to beat his wife or force her into his bed.

When the President asks you to do something, you’d be surprised how keen you are to oblige,” Syme said.

auspicious

A limitless supply of cheap labor might build you a new city every year, but it ultimately just makes you the factory floor for other countries’ companies.

Dragons in History by Eleanor Lock (Border Press, London, 1999)

The zoo’s “image consultants” from New York had been very clear about this: establish your believability first, then go tabloid.

German-made Heckler & Koch MP-7 submachine guns with special compact M40 grenade launchers under the barrels.

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him. —J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London, 1937)

Sometimes you had to make the animals perform.

This is how great knowledge dies, on bookshelves in plain sight.

when are going

. In the 19th century, Europe invaded and colonised Africa. In the 21st century, Africa invades and colonises Europe.

The dragons are throwing cars at me!

A civilization is judged by how it treats the vulnerable.

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

Lily just stared down in horror at Jack and Alby as they took off for the maze, fleeing from the advancing snake-headed warrior. THE

The acquisition of knowledge, the sheer pleasure of finding things out, is the greatest gift in life.

location of the royal prison have existed for centuries:

Feels like we’re driving into Mordor,” Hamish muttered. “What’s Mordor?” Syme asked. “Never mind.

The Church’s war against women occurred not under Christ—who by all accounts held women as equals to men—but through the writings of St Irenaeus and Tertullian, and that most cruel woman-hater of them all, St Paul, whose hostile views on women were unfortunately included in the Bible. But let me be clear, it is not only a Catholic problem; it is a Christian one: Martin Luther, the scourge of the old Church, shares its views on women. He once wrote: “Girls begin to talk and to stand on their feet sooner than boys because weeds always grow up more quickly than good crops.” Weeds! Weeds!

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.

The myth of the dragon is a very peculiar one, precisely because it is a truly global myth. Giant serpents appear in mythologies from all over the world: China, Scandinavia, Greece, Persia, Germany, Central America, the United Kingdom, even Africa. There is no discernible reason for this. How could the myth of a large serpentine creature be so consistent across the ancient world? From: Dragons in History by Eleanor Lock (Border Press, London, 1999)

In fact, the name ‘rook’ derives from ruhk, the Persian word for chariot. Pawns were footsoldiers, bishops were elephants, knights were mounted cavalry, and speeding along at the edges of the board were the swift and deadly chariots.

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.

Jack quickly set about releasing Pooh Bear from his cage. Once he was free and standing on solid ground, Pooh gazed at Jack in horror. 'By Allah, Jack, you look like shit.' Bloody and filthy and weary beyond all human endurance, Jack smiled a crooked smile. 'Yeah...' Then he fainted into Pooh Bear's arms.

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)

What do you think this is, a Matthew Reilly novel?” “Whether

Dad jokes. You hate them when you hear them every day, but trust me, you sure do miss ’em when he’s gone.

Over twenty men died during the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, Dr Lynch. Does anyone regret that? No, all anyone sees is a marvel of its time, a great achievement in human ingenuity. So it will be here. This place will be beyond great. It will be the envy of the entire world.

Other intelligent animals—like chimps, wolves and hyenas—might set simple traps. Crocodiles often set traps several days in advance. If a six-metre saltwater crocodile saw you coming down to a riverbank at 7:30 a.m. for four days in a row to check your lobster cages, on the fifth day it would wait at the water’s edge, just below the surface, and pounce when you arrived. Crocodiles had extraordinary patience and amazing memories. Their ability to spot routine was incredible: sometimes they would set up ambushes based on the weekly, even monthly routines of their prey.

full

The next 36 hours passed like shore leave in a laundromat

The most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.

Race readied himself to jump down onto the submerged roof of the Humvee. He couldn’t imagine how it must have looked—him, in his jeans, T-shirt and baseball cap standing atop a submerged Army helicopter in the middle of a caiman-infested Amazonian river.

Never give up, Never say die.

But to hate is cheap. One does not need any money to hate.

I am supposed to be this brilliant man. Well, here is the most important thing I know: retain your inner joy. If you do that, you will live a successful and happy life.

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? we must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and this thing must be attained. - Marie Curie

Some readers turn up their noses at such books, considering them to be too lowbrow. But not I. One who reads such a book reads it for pleasure, for joy. pg43

Every decision comes down to a choice. This is the right choice.

white-hot tailflame blazing from its base like a magnesium flare, leaving an impossibly long smoketrail in its wake. The smoketrail extended, snakelike, a God-sized python, over the distant horizon, streaking away toward the missile’s source, Yemen. And the sound it made. A single, continuous BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! If Schofield’s X-15 was ripping the fabric of the sky, then this baby was shredding it to pieces. The banking X-15 roared round in a giant semi-circle, careering in

Rufus! Bank left!” Schofield yelled, peering up through their canopy. Rufus did so—rolling them on their side just as two Czech L-59s went screaming past them on either side and buried themselves in the sea. And then all of a sudden they hit the confines of the Canal— —and lost the electronic protection of the Prowlers. Schofield’s X-15 blasted down the length of the Suez Canal, flying low, banking around anchored

…but leaving the MiGs in the path of the two Phoenix missiles. Boom-boom! The MiGs exploded and the X-15 continued its wide circle until it was back in the trench of the Canal, back on its southeasterly course. However, its wide circle—easily two hundred kilometers wide—had allowed one of the African planes to loose a last-ditch missile, its finest: a single stolen American AIM-120 AMRAAM, the best air-to-air missile in the world.

Policies and laws were the contemporary weapons of government. Amend them, in just the right way, and you could allow anyone to do anything—and it’d be legal.

Adolf Hitler who once said, “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” Jack stepped away from the newly opened fissure just as it collapsed, reburying itself for what he hoped was another eighty years. He vowed to tell no one of what he had found. It was too valuable in too many ways for modern man to have it. For now,

If you have enough money and a good name, you can do anything. CORNELIA GUEST

You'd be surprised, you can do alot more damage with your brains than with your fists. And can still be a lady at the same time.

asshat-of-a-man,

After defeating the Axis powers in the Second World War with its military and industrial might, the United States then set about waging and winning a far more subtle war against the whole world: a war of cultural superiority.

Although cable news has, I believe, done much damage in undercutting civility in political discourse—a civility to which more journalists and newscasters aspired in the pre-cable era—it is insufficient to simply single out blowhards like Bill O’Reilly, or Fox News overlord Roger Ailes, or on the left, Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, formerly of MSNBC. The problem is partly that there’s money in staging the televisual equivalent of cockfighting.

Health is the greatest possession, Contentment the greatest treasure, Confidence the greatest friend, Non-being the greatest joy.

By the time Elizabeth was seven, she was fluent in French, capable at Spanish and could speak and read Latin and Greek. When William Grindal—supervised by the great Ascham—took over her education in 1544, she had added Italian and German to that list. While Grindal managed her day-to-day lessons, it was Ascham who always loomed in the background, the grand architect of her overall schooling. He stepped in when major subjects were taught: languages, mathematics, and history, both ancient and recent. A vocal advocate of the benefits of regular outdoor activity, he even taught her archery in the grounds of Hatfield

sheer rock wall of

taught many important lessons: to flatter one’s opponent, to lay traps and to see them laid, to be bold and to restrain one’s tendency to boldness, to appear naïve when in truth one is alert, to see the future many moves ahead and to discover that decisions always have consequences.