Alex Garland
Alex Garland
Alexander "Alex" Medawar Garlandis an English novelist, screenwriter, film producer and director, best known for his work as the screenwriter of 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Never Let Me Goand Dredd. Garland first rose to prominence in the late 90s with his novel The Beach which went on to receive universal acclaim with many critics lauding Garland as a key voice of Generation X...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
country confused feelings
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
mistake writing holiday
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.
sunshine proud able
When I see 'Sunshine,' I see a film that part of me is kind of very proud of and another part of me is very sad about, so it's a really complicated film for me. And I've never been really able to resolve all that in myself.
beach firsts bangkok
The first I heard of the beach was in Bangkok, on the Ko Sanh Road.
dream jobs memories
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.
character ideas stories
I've written original material before, where I've come up with the idea and the characters myself, and that's definitely very different to working with someone else's characters and stories.
eye men looks
If you look at the whole life of the planet, we - you know, Man - has only been around for a few blinks of an eye. So if the infection wipes us all out, that is a return to normality.
matter chance infinite
Well, if there's an infinite amount of chances for something to happen, then eventually it will happen - no matter how small the likelihood.
dream waking wakes-you
Waking was the most reliable part of a dream, as built into dreams as death is to life. You dream, you wake: you live, you die.
cutting expectations done
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.
beach giving-up stubborn
I wrote a whole novel before The Beach. Unpublishable. Junk. But, for some reason I stuck at novels and wrote a second. Still not sure why I didn't give up. Stubborn, maybe.
mistake writing jilted
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.
home democracy paper
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.
holiday tourists traveller
Tourists went on holidays while travellers did something else. They travelled.