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Alex Garland Biography

Alexander Medawar Garland (born 26 May 1970) is an English novelist, screenwriter, film producer and director. He rose to prominence as a novelist in the late 1990s with his novel The Beach, which led some critics to call Garland a key voice of Generation X. He subsequently received praise for the screenplays of the films 28 Days Later (2002), Sunshine (2007), Never Let Me Go (2010) and Dredd (2012).

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Alex Garland Quotes

I don’t keep a travel diary. I did keep a travel diary once and it was a big mistake. All I remember of that trip is what I bothered to write down. Everything else slipped away, as though my mind felt jilted by my reliance on pen and paper. For exactly the same reason I don’t travel with a camera. My holiday becomes the snapshots and anything I forget to record is lost.

Becomes, Holiday, Mistake, Paper, Reason, Writing

I used to think about video games, "This is clearly an amazing, new narrative medium, and it's going to be mind-blowing when people get to grips with what's possible within this medium. " It took us a century to get really good at film. Video games are at a much earlier stage.

Film, People, Thinking, Used, Video

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. In novels, you can persuade people of things that work that don't really work.

Facility, Page, People, Problem, Things, Writing

Normally, small talk is enough for me to form an opinion of someone. I make quick judgments, often completely wrong, and then stick by them rigidly.

Enough, Judgment, Opinion, Stick, Sticks, Talk

I do all this alone, everything I achieve, I achieve alone, because it's my head I'm locked into, and I share this space with nobody but myself.

Achieve, Alone, Everything, Locked, Share, Space

I don't like dealing with money transactions in poor countries. I get confused between the feeling that I shouldn't haggle with poverty and getting ripped off

Confused, Country, Haggle, Poor, Ripped, Travel

If I'd learnt one thing from travelling, it was that the way to get things done was to go ahead and do them. Don't talk about going to Borneo. Book a ticket, get a visa, pack a bag, and it just happens.

Bag, Bags, Book, Done, Learnt

Vietnam, me love you long time. All day, all night, me love you long time. (. . . ) Dropping acid on the Mekong Delta, smoking grass through a rifle barrel, flying on a helicopter with opera blasting out of loudspeakers, tracer-fire and paddy-field scenery, the smell of napalm in the morning. Long time.

Helicopter, Love You, Mekong, Morning, Night, Smoking

Well, if there's an infinite amount of chances for something to happen, then eventually it will happen - no matter how small the likelihood.

Amount, Chance, Infinite, Likelihood, Matter

Tourists went on holidays while travellers did something else. They travelled.

Holiday, Holidays, Tourists, Traveller, Travellers

Vietnam, me love you long time. All day, all night, me love you long time.

Book, Love, Love You, Night, Vietnam

Dream life, I realized, was only confusing when you were awake. It was from the perspective of waking life that dream life seemed fractured and lacking consequence, lacking any certainty that one thing led to another. But from within dream life, the world was generally coherent. Not exactly an unconfusing world-just no more confusing than any other.

Confusing, Dream, Lacking, Perspective, Seemed

Personally I don't think there's any real intrinsic difference between comic books, movies, theatre, novels. I know there's sure to be some differences of some sorts. I've worked on novels, films, and video games, and in an adaptation, I guess one of the issues is that I have to be in love with the thing I'm adapting before I do it. So that can cause a problem. You can be too scared of it. You could be too reverential. But at the same time you want to try to capture this thing that you're obsessed by. You're fixated for a reason. What's the reason? You try to get ahold of it.

Ahold, Book, Know, Real, Scared, Thinking

The truth is, I hadn't grown up really wanting to be a writer. The whole thing was a weird aberration in some ways, and I didn't feel personally connected to the level of success I had with it - the success of sorts, I guess.

Connected, Success, Truth Is, Weird, Whole, Writer

Uh. . . what can I say? Made money. Given a launch pad for a working life. Set a precedent I had no interest in following. Created expectations that I was not cut-out to match. Disappointed virtually all of my readers subsequently. But I like what I've done, and I stand by it all.

Cutting, Done, Expectations, Launch, Match, Set

The first I heard of the beach was in Bangkok, on the Ko Sanh Road.

Bangkok, Beach, Firsts, Heard, Road

The key relationship for writers in film is producers, because those are the first two people involved and the ones who work on it intensely in a private way without the big machinery of film.

Film, Intensely, Machinery, People, Producers, Writers

Every dream that anyone ever has is theirs alone and they never manage to share it. And they never manage to remember it either. Not truly or accurately. Not as it was. Our memories and our vocabularies aren't up to the job.

Alone, Dream, Job, Jobs, Memories, Remember

When you develop an infatuation for someone you always find a reason to believe that this is exactly the person for you. It doesn’t need to be a good reason. Taking photographs of the night sky, for example. Now, in the long run, that’s just the kind of dumb, irritating habit that would cause you to split up. But in the haze of infatuation, it’s just what you’ve been searching for all these years.

Beach, Believe, Exactly, Night, Running, Searching

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.

Anger, Hearing, Obscure, Stuff, Tears

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