Matthew Reilly > Quotes

“There is no such thing as an "aspiring writer". You are a writer. Period.”
― Matthew Reilly, Area 7

“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.”
― Matthew Reilly, The 5 Greatest Warriors

“I have both held and beheld unlimited power and of it I know but one thing. It drives men mad.'
- Alexander the Great”
― Matthew Reilly, Seven Deadly Wonders

“what would Scarecrow do!”
― Matthew Reilly

“mmmm, space stuff”
― Matthew Reilly

“There’s an Oriental saying I like: “If aggression meets empty space it tends to defeat itself.”
― Matthew Reilly, The Tournament

“I snorted. ‘For a great sultan who is lord and ruler of all that he surveys, his English is lamentably poor. He can’t even spell England properly.’
Still holding the note, Mr Ascham looked up at me. ‘Is that so? Tell me, Bess, do you speak his language? Any Arabic or Turkish-Arabic?’
‘You know that I do not.’
‘Then however lamentable his English may be, he still speaks your language while you cannot speak his. To me, this gives him a considerable advantage over you. Always pause before you criticise, and never unduly criticise one who has made an effort at something you yourself have not even attempted.”
― Matthew Reilly, The Tournament

“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.”
― Matthew Reilly, Scarecrow Returns

“Hamish shrugged. “It’s all pretty cool and impressive … if you never saw fucking Jurassic Park.”
― Matthew Reilly, The Great Zoo of China

“A monster movie is only as good as the monster in it.”
― Matthew Reilly, The Great Zoo of China

“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!”
― Matthew Reilly, Scarecrow Returns

“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.”
― Matthew Reilly, The Great Zoo of China

“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.”
― Matthew Reilly, Contest

“We didn’t come this far just to come this far”
― Matthew Reilly, The Three Secret Cities

“You don’t like people?” Raf asked. “I don’t like what people do to each other.”
― Matthew Reilly, Troll Mountain

“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.”
― Matthew Reilly, The Great Zoo of China

“Holy shit, she thought. The dragons are throwing cars at me!”
― Matthew Reilly, The Great Zoo of China

“You'd be surprised, you can do a lot more damage with your brains than with your fists.”
― Matthew Reilly, Contest

“Convincing someone to believe something that was inherently unbelievable often meant getting that person to make a quick and easy comparison to something they already knew.”
― Matthew Reilly, The Great Zoo of China

“The airliner-sized dragon blew apart in a monumental spray of blood and pulp. Great chunks of flesh the size of boulders rained down from the sky.
“The empire is striking back,” Ambassador Syme observed, peering out the window beside CJ.”
― Matthew Reilly, The Great Zoo of China

“I don’t save the world for glory or power. I have neither and I don’t care for them. In fact, I quite like it that the world doesn’t know my name. I just do what I do for the people I love.”
― Matthew Reilly, The Three Secret Cities

“That’s not the whole of it. As with many other faiths—including our own Christian one—a small group of zealots have distorted Islam to further their own agenda. When many women took to imitating the fashions of the Prophet’s wives, some Moslem men saw an opportunity to put all women under their thumb. They espoused foul laws like those allowing a man to beat his wife or force her into his bed.”
― Matthew Reilly, The Tournament

“Many humans live their entire lives without questioning the ‘truths’ they’ve been told.”
― Matthew Reilly, Troll Mountain

“Over twenty men died during the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, Dr Lynch. Does anyone regret that? No, all anyone sees is a marvel of its time, a great achievement in human ingenuity.”
― Matthew Reilly, The Great Zoo of China

“So it is with Moslem women and their veils,’ Michelangelo said. ‘When they saw Muhammad’s wives wearing veils, they sought to imitate them, and so now nearly all Islamic women wear veils even though there is no stipulation in their Holy Koran that they do so.”
― Matthew Reilly, The Tournament

“Human fears are very often irrational constructs of the mind.”
― Matthew Reilly, Contest

“Are you a doctor?” Li said.
“I’m better than that. I’m a vet. Vets do everything: brain surgery, heart surgery, lab analysis, dislocations –”
― Matthew Reilly, The Great Zoo of China

“The problem, as I see it, are the twin human creations of marriage and religion. It is marriage and religion that make copulation complex and hurtful. Marriage brings up notions of trust, cuckoldry and ownership, while religion makes certain kinds of intimacy sinful.”
― Matthew Reilly, The Tournament

“To anyone who knows a writer, never underestimate the power of your encouragement.”
― Matthew Reilly

“The Church’s war against women occurred not under Christ—who by all accounts held women as equals to men—but through the writings of St Irenaeus and Tertullian, and that most cruel woman-hater of them all, St Paul, whose hostile views on women were unfortunately included in the Bible. But let me be clear, it is not only a Catholic problem; it is a Christian one: Martin Luther, the scourge of the old Church, shares its views on women. He once wrote: “Girls begin to talk and to stand on their feet sooner than boys because weeds always grow up more quickly than good crops.” Weeds! Weeds!”
― Matthew Reilly, The Tournament