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.”

“Americans worship technology. It's an inherent trait in the national zeitgeist.”

“I don't know if great times make great men, but I know they can kill them.”

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

“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.”

“When I believe in my ability to do something, there is no such word as no.”

“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.”

“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?”

“J'ignore si les grandes époques font les grands hommes, mais je sais qu'elles les tuent.”

“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.”

“The monsters that rose from the dead, they are nothing compared to the ones we carry in our hearts”

“Organize before they rise!”

“Use your head; cut off theirs.”

“During the Qin Dynasty, all books not relating to practical concernssuch as agriculture or construction were ordered burned by theemperor to guard against "dangerous thought." Whether accounts ofzombie attacks perished in the flames will never be known. Thisobscure section of a medical manuscript, preserved in the wall of anexecuted Chinese scholar, might be proof of such attacks.”

“Remember; no matter how desperate the situation seems, time spentthinking clearly is never time wasted.”

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

“The dead walk among us.”