Quotes from Matthew Reilly

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

I'm very good at plot.

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

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.

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.

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.'

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.

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.

When I started writing, I was reading people such as Tom Clancy or Michael Crichton, who did 'Jurassic Park,' which is possibly the most action-filled book you'll read, apart from mine, and I said to myself, 'Why aren't these guys doing big-scale action like you would see in a movie?'

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

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.