Quotes from Alistair MacLean

The first criticism I ever read was of my first book, H.M.S. 'Ulysses.' It got two whole pages to itself in a now defunct Scottish newspaper, with a drawing of the dust jacket wreathed in flames and the headline 'Burn this book.' I had paid the Royal Navy the greatest compliment of which I could conceive: this dolt thought it was an act of denigration.

He walked the length of the gleaming torpedoes and halted before another steel door in a cross bulkhead. He opened this, and beyond, four feet away, was another such heavy door set in another such bulkhead. The sills were about eighteen inches

The match scratched noisily across the rusted metal of the corrugated iron shed, fizzled, then burst into a sputtering pool of light

I wrote each book in thirty-five days flat - just to get the darned thing finished.