Andy McNab > Quotes

“Better to live a day on your feet than a lifetime on your knees.”
― Andy McNab, Red Notice

“the rasp of the respirator’s filter were about as comforting as Darth Vader reading a bedtime story,”
― Andy McNab, Red Notice

“You know, my world may look like a pile of shit, but at least I sometimes get to sit on top of it”
― Andy Mcnab, Last Light

“I was a thirty-seven-year-old man with a lot on his mind but not too much in it.”
― Andy McNab, Remote Control

“Anybody who says he’s not scared is either a liar or mentally deficient.”
― Andy McNab, Bravo Two Zero

“Better to be tried by twelve than carried by six.”
― Andy McNab, Remote Control

“Carpe diem!”
― Andy McNab, Bravo Two Zero

“He’d been expelled from the movement by Gerry Adams in 1985 for threatening to initiate a campaign of murder that would have hampered the new political strategy. It was a bit like being kicked out of the Gestapo for cruelty.”
― Andy McNab, Remote Control

“I’m not going to be pushed around by some Oswald Mosley wannabe with delusions of grandeur.”
― Andy McNab, SAS: Fortress

“Yes’ – Pearce nodded – ‘but I don’t think Bale was. Lots of big words were used and he struggles beyond two syllables.’ ‘I’m not sure what’s more surprising,’ said Biggs. ‘That you were listening, or that you just used the word syllables.”
― Andy McNab, The New Enemy

“They were prepared physically and mentally for war. They’d all had at least nine lives, and had the burns, the dents, the bullet holes and the knife wounds to prove it.”
― Andy McNab, Red Notice

“Harvard University biologist David Haig has spent the last few years systematically debunking the notion that the relationship between a mother and her unborn child is anything like the rose-tinted idyll that one usually finds on the glossy covers of maternity magazines. In fact, it is anything but. Pre-eclampsia, a condition of dangerously high blood pressure in pregnant women, is brutally kick-started by nothing short of a foetal coup d’état. It begins with the placenta invading the maternal bloodstream and initiating what, in anyone’s book, is a ruthless biological heist – an in utero sting operation to draw out vital nutrients. And I’m not just talking about baby Gordon Gekkos here – I’m talking about all of us. The curtain-raiser is well known to obstetricians. The foetus begins by injecting a crucial protein into the mother’s circulation which forces her to drive more blood, and therefore more nourishment, into the relatively low-pressure placenta. It’s a scam, pure and simple, which poses a significant and immediate risk to the mother’s life. ‘The bastard!’ says Andy. ‘Shall we get some olives?’ ‘And it’s by no means the only one,’ I continue. In another embryonic Ponzi scheme, foetal release of placental lactogen counteracts the effect of maternal insulin thereby increasing the mother’s blood sugar level and providing an excess for the foetus’s own benefit. ‘A bowl of the citrus and chilli and a bowl of the sweet pepper and basil,’ Andy says to the waiter. Then he peers at me over the menu. ‘So basically what you’re saying then is this: forget the Gaddafis and the Husseins. When it comes to chemical warfare it’s the unborn child that’s top dog!’ ‘Well they definitely nick stuff that isn’t theirs,’ I say. ‘And they don’t give a damn about the consequences.’ Andy smiles. ‘So in other words they’re psychopaths!’ he says. BABY”
― Andy McNab, The Good Psychopath's Guide to Success

“I made what must have been about a sixty-point turn and eventually managed to squeeze out of the small and crowded car park at the rear”
― Andy McNab, Liberation Day

“If his iPhone rings, he could be fucked. We”
― Andy McNab, Red Notice

“tablecloth. ‘He let me leave early. Stomach pains … I might have”
― Andy McNab, Detonator

“Fergus had chosen the base camp carefully. He was always careful. Being careful had kept him alive during his twelve years in the Regiment and now that he was operating alone nothing was going to change.”
― Andy McNab, Traitor

“newly purchased herbal teabags”
― Andy McNab, Firewall

“AK-47.”
― Andy McNab, Traitor

“landing strip.”
― Andy McNab, Detonator

“airport at Genoa, or the one at Pisa’s about a hundred”
― Andy McNab, Brute Force

“The Omanis had feasts called haflas where they’d bring a goat in and cook it in the fire. It was always a fantastic gathering. They’d turn up in their Land Cruisers in the middle of nowhere, put the carpets out, and start a fire up. Sometimes they’d tow in a small water bowser as well. There was a huge amount of ritual involved; the animal was treated with immense respect before it was killed, in accordance with Islam.”
― Andy McNab, Immediate Action: The Explosive True Story of the Toughest-and Most Highly Secretive-Strike Force in the World

“We certainly wouldn’t practise carrying it now: that would be a bit like practising being wet, cold and hungry, which wouldn’t achieve anything.”
― Andy McNab, Bravo Two Zero

“to create”
― Andy McNab, Dark Winter

“stop for a one-shot camera. Twenty-”
― Andy McNab, Crisis Four

“how”
― Andy McNab, Bravo Two Zero: The Harrowing True Story of a Special Forces Patrol Behind the Lines in Iraq