Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alex Garland
Age: 54
Born: 1970
Born: May 26
Film Director
Film Producer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
London
England
Alexander Medawar Garland
Whole
Novel
Giving
Maybe
Junk
Sure
Stubborn
Didn
Novels
Stills
Beach
Give
Stuck
Still
Wrote
Reason
Second

More quotes by Alex Garland

Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The truth is, I hadn't grown up really wanting to be a writer. The whole thing was a weird aberration in some ways, and I didn't feel personally connected to the level of success I had with it - the success of sorts, I guess.
Alex Garland
Image
The first I heard of the beach was in Bangkok, on the Ko Sanh Road.
Alex Garland
Image
Vietnam, me love you long time. All day, all night, me love you long time.
Alex Garland
Image
There's one massive problem with coming from writing novels into screenplays that I've discovered over the years, which is that you've got too much facility on the page. In novels, you can persuade people of things that work that don't really work.
Alex Garland
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I used to think about video games, This is clearly an amazing, new narrative medium, and it's going to be mind-blowing when people get to grips with what's possible within this medium. It took us a century to get really good at film. Video games are at a much earlier stage.
Alex Garland
Image
I can kid people, including myself, into believing that something on the page will work. But when you film it, you just think, Oh ....
Alex Garland
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The key relationship for writers in film is producers, because those are the first two people involved and the ones who work on it intensely in a private way without the big machinery of film.
Alex Garland