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Portrait of Alex Garland

Alex Garland

(1970) Writer United Kingdom

81 quotes in 476 categories

Alex Garland says the first draft of Ex Machina kept only about ten percent of its original material. He calls The Beach subversive, notes dream life feels confusing only when awake, and says poverty and riots drove him to darker topics. He admits he never intended to be a writer, jokes about Wes Anderson’s auteur label, and recalls Moshe’s ear‑splitting laugh as a mad‑man’s weapon.

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Alex Garland is a writer from the United Kingdom, best known for The Beach.

Quick Facts About Alex Garland

Born: May 26, 1970
Nationality: United Kingdom
Profession: Writer
Notable works: The Beach
Spouse: Paloma Baeza

About Alex Garland

Alexander Medawar Garland is an English author and filmmaker. He rose to prominence with his novel The Beach (1996). He received praise for writing the Danny Boyle films 28 Days Later (2002) and its sequel, 28 Years Later (2025), and Sunshine (2007), as well as Never Let Me Go (2010) and Dredd (2012). In video games, he co-wrote Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (2010) and was a story supervisor on DmC: Devil May Cry (2013).

Quotes by Alex Garland

“That was longer than a heartbeat.”

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Really original material is quite hard to find.

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I didn't like being a name attached to a book.

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'The Beach' novel, in my mind, was, in some respects, subversive.

Beach

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

Bangkok

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I can kid people, including myself, into believing that something on the page will work. But when you film it, you just…

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By the time the plane was airborne I'd forgotten England even existed.

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I carry a lot of scars. I like the way that sounds. I carry a LOT of scars.

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I'm always pushing back against the last thing I did in some way, and some of that is restlessness and a sense…

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Waking was the most reliable part of a dream, as built into dreams as death is to life. You dream, you wake:…

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When I'm really fixated on a bit of writing, I can easily spend six days without leaving the house and barely leaving…

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It's perfectly reasonable to say that AIs are potentially dangerous. That seems to me like a statement of fact.

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

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Of course witnessing poverty was the first to be ticked off the list. Then I had to graduate to the more obscure…

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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…

Books

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My approach to directing is to not do very much directing. I'm mainly interested in what the creative group individually and together…

Creativity

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I know some directors get very involved in trailers and posters. Some even cut their own. I stay completely away from it.…

Cinema

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What I see in science is a lot of imagination referring to things that are fundamental to what we are. Our cells,…

Future

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Uh... what can I say? Made money. Given a launch pad for a working life. Set a precedent I had no interest…

Books

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When I see 'Sunshine,' I see a film that part of me is kind of very proud of and another part of…

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If you look at the whole life of the planet, we - you know, Man - has only been around for a…

Apocalypse

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I'm just interested in science, and I try to keep track of what's going on and get my head around it -…

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“I biked over to my dad's flat and emotionally blackmailed him into lending me enough cash to leave the country. On that…

Broken hearts

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When you develop an infatuation for someone you always find a reason to believe that this is exactly the person for you.…

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The thing about tourism is just that it's incredibly powerful. It's like a gun and it's incredibly easy to be irresponsible with…

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I don’t keep a travel diary. I did keep a travel diary once and it was a big mistake. All I remember…

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The success that comes from my books is not something I feel very comfortable with. Past a certain point you have to…

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Vietnam, me love you long time. All day, all night, me love you long time. (...) Dropping acid on the Mekong Delta,…

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“On that trip I learnt something very important. Escape through travel works. Almost from the moment I boarded my flight, life in…

Broken hearts

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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…

Adaptation

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“You never listen to me anymore. Before, if I was talking to you, you would always listen. But now you have no…

Communication

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“I once read the most widely understood word in the whole world is ‘OK’, followed by ‘Coke’, as in cola. I think…

Christmas tree

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I didn't intend to be a novelist. I didn't intend to be anything. I thought I'd be a journalist.

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I did keep a travel diary once and it was a big mistake. All I remember of that trip is what I…

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There are one hundred glow-stars on my bedroom ceiling. (...) Glow-stars are strange. They make the ceiling disappear.

Astronomy

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Look, when AIs come up, they're not going to be like us. A self-aware, sentient AI is not going to be like…

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Though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for I am the evilest motherfucker in the valley

Death

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If someone says Wes Anderson is an auteur, I'll believe it 100 percent. Fine. He's an auteur, but I'm not.

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

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

Holiday

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Alex Garland by topic

Writing (16) Film (15) Books (11)