Quotes from Alex Garland

Moshe was an Israeli with an ear-slitting laugh. He used it in the same way as a madman uses a gun, spraying it around with bewildering randomness.

Of course witnessing poverty was the first to be ticked off the list. Then I had to graduate to the more obscure stuff. Being in a riot was something I pursued with a truly obsessive zeal, along with being tear-gassed and hearing gunshots fired in anger.

On that trip I learnt something very important. Escape through travel works. Almost from the moment I boarded my flight, life in England became meaningless. Seat-belt signs lit up, problems switched off. Broken armrests took precedence over broken hearts. By the time the plane was airborne I'd forgotten England even existed." (The Beach)

The dilapidation was not a memory but a representation of a poorly remembered past.

You learn about me, and I learn nothing about you. That's not a foundation on which friendships are based.

An hour later we were walking past rows of busy beach huts and weaving between sunbathers and Frisbee games. I was surprised that people weren't taking more notice of us. Everyone looked so strange to me that I couldn't believe I didn't look equally strange to them.

The challenge is not to act automatically. It's to find an action that is not automatic. From painting, to breathing, to talking, to fucking. To falling in love...

When you encounter people in life - like a chance encounter at a bar or wherever you happen to be - you make these incredibly quick, quite intricate decisions about people based on very small amounts of coded information. We're good at that.

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.

You wake, you die.

Impulse. Response. Fluid. Imperfect. Patterned. Chaotic.

Moshe was a tall Israeli with an ear-splitting laugh. He used it in the same way as a madman uses a gun, spraying it around with bewildering randomness. Hearing the laugh made me blink instinctively, like hearing a hammer pound on brick or metal. Our conversation was impeded by having to watch him through the strobe effect of my convulsing eyes.

transparent evasion exercises.

There was nothing strange about it. Jed and i were on a covert mission. We had dinoculars, jungle, a quarry, a threat, the hidden presence of AK-47s and slanted eyes. The only missing element was a Doors soundtrack.

I remembered a few things about waking. I remembered the sense of surprise as dream life and waking life swapped primacy, and the way in which the most tangible and deeply involving dreams could bleach entirely away.

Maybe to have a memory you need time for reflection, however brief, just to let the memory find a place to settle.

I didn't get the impression that the policeman cared much about the whole thing either. After another thirty minutes of ruthless interrogation ('Can you ve'fy you eat banan' pancake?') he let me go asking me not to leave Khao San within 24 hours

He spoke in english. Not flawlessly by any means. Not like a Nazi POW camp commandant who appreciates english poetry and says things like 'you know, we are much alike, you and I I'. But good enough

I paused. ...I'm not dreaming. True. Then I'm going insane. Do you want an honest answer? Yes. He shrugged. I'd only query the tense. But I'm not a professional, so, you know, seek out a second opinion.

Ava's living area is made up of three primary spaces.

Jed! I got stuck in some air pocket with more exits than... I couldn't think of anything famous with a large number of exits I nearly drowned!

He was always reading. With his street kid clients, the popular belief was that he was searching for an elusive gap that existed somewhere in his books, hidden between lines or letters. One that would allow him, once and for all, to crawl inside the pages and disappear.

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.

Don't talk about going travelling. Book a ticket, get a visa, pack a bag and it just happens