Max Brooks

“I wanted to serve. It was Desert Storm. I thought, 'I was a rich kid, and America's been good to me.'”

“The bottom line is I'm a slow zombie guy - I'm always a slow zombie guy but I also know I'm in the minority.”

“I remember I used to come up to my teacher crying because I couldn't read. She would say: 'You can do this. You just don't want to do this.'”

“You can watch 'Dawn of the Dead' and still sleep at night. Try that with 'The Day After'.”

“Americans worship technology. It's an inherent trait in the national zeitgeist.”

“Zombies have no memories of their former life. You wont see the undead trying to wash windows or do your taxes. All they know how to do is swarm and feed.”

“I think 'G.I. Joe' is a perfect example of how I'm the world's worst businessman. If I were smart, I'd be writing 'World War Z Part 12', but I have to go where the muse leads, and I've always been a huge 'G.I. Joe' fan. I always wanted to know more about these characters, these little plastic figures I played with as a kid.”

“Zombie books were going to be my passion projects, but certainly not pay the bills. I thought I was going to have to get a real job on a sitcom or something, and have my zombie books to remind myself I was still a writer at heart. I never thought I could actually pay my bills and write what I wanted.”

“You assume things, like whatever country has more firepower wins the wars, and that's actually not true at all.”

“That's the thing about zombies. They don't adapt and they don't think. Literally, you could have a zombie on one side of a chain link fence and you could be on the other side and they could be trying to get to you and six feet down could be an open door and they will not go through that door in the fence. That's why they're so scary.”

“I think Americans are at our best when we recover from a crisis. We've suffered some blows that other countries would have never recovered from.”

“I'm not a horror fan. I'm an anti-horror fan. I think horror fans feel deep down in the pit of their souls, they feel safe, and therefore bored. And therefore they want to be scared.”

“Zombies are apocalyptic. I think that's why people love them because we're living in, not apocalyptic times, but I think we're living in fear of the apocalyptic times.”

“We live in such a service-based, globalised economy where very few people actually make anything and the people who do make stuff... it's all part of a massive global supply chain. So what if all those chains were suddenly cut, how would you make something? How would you keep people alive? And that was something I wanted to explore.”

“When I read Frank Miller's 'The Dark Knight Returns', I think it's a wonderful record of the Reagan era. I think it's amazing. This is the time I lived in.”

“I think the general anxiety of the 1960s - '70s spawned our interest in the living dead. When people worry about the end of their world, they need a safe vessel for all their fears. Zombies provide that vessel because they're 'safe.'”

“Most people don't believe something can happen until it already has. That's not stupidity or weakness, that's just human nature.”

“Any survival guide will tell you, don't buy a pair of combat boots before any disaster. They'll tear your feet up. Or water - don't bring water with you because it'll tire you out and you'll lose too much fluid. Bring a water pump.”

“Zombies are so popular. There's a lot of chaff out there. For every one person who is legitimately passionate about zombies, there are a hundred people who are thinking, 'Hey, I can make a buck off of this.' The problem is that some of their stuff is so lame.”

“Feelings of any kind are not known to the walking dead. Every form of psychological warfare, from attempts at enraging the undead to provoking pity have all met with disaster. Joy, sadness, confidence, anxiety, love, hatred, fear—all of these feelings and thousands more that make up the human “heart” are as useless to the living dead as the organ of the same name. Who knows if this is humanity’s greatest weakness or strength? The debate continues, and probably will forever.”