Alistair Maclean famous quotes

Bowman turned his back on her and began to search the place methodically and exhaustively. When one searches any place, be it a gypsy caravan or a baronial mansion, methodically and exhaustively, one has to wreck it completely in the process.So, in a orderly and systematic fashion, Bowman set about reducing Czerda's caravan to a total ruin.
-- Alistair Maclean

#Fashion #Wrecks #Systematic

This won't look so good in my obituary," Schaffer said dolefully. There was a perceptible edge of strain under the lightly-spoken words."Gave his life for his country in a ladies' lavatory in Upper Bavaria.
-- Alistair Maclean

#Country #Looks #Said

...the men of the Ulysses had no need to stand in shame...many had found, or were finding, that the point of no return was not necessarily the edge of the precipice: it could be the bottom of the valley, the beginning of the long climb up the far slope, and when a man had once begun that climb he never looked back to that other side.
-- Alistair Maclean

#Men #Long #Return

There are no brave men and cowardly men in the world, my son. There are only brave men. To be born, to live, to die—that takes courage enough in itself, and more than enough. We are all brave men and we are all afraid, and what the world calls a brave man, he too is brave and afraid like the all rest of us. Only he is brave for five minutes longer.
-- Alistair Maclean

#Courage #Son #Men

I wrote each book in thirty-five days flat - just to get the darned thing finished.
-- Alistair Maclean

#Book #Thirty #Flats

I'm not a born writer, and I don't enjoy writing.
-- Alistair Maclean

#Writing #Born #Enjoy

I'm not a novelist, I'm a storyteller. There is no art in what I do, no mystique.
-- Alistair Maclean

#Art #Novelists #Storyteller

People always ask what I would have done if I weren't doing what I'm doing. And I say I'd [still] be in fashion or in beauty. It's such a dream come true now because I have the ability to go into home [goods] and accessories as well.

So in the Libyan fable it is told That once an eagle, stricken with a dart, Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft: With our own feathers, not by others' hands, Are we now smitten.

I don't really go to fashion parties; they're not my scene.

To take part in the African revolution, it is not enough to write a revolutionary song. You must fashion the revolution with the people. And if you fashion it with the people, the songs will come by themselves.

Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.

Follow your passion. Be yourself, but check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Sometimes when you're with somebody, and all their stuff is at your house, it's so hard to break up with them. You don't know what they're going to wreck and destroy.

Inside every lawyer is the wreck of a poet.

I'm a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop But if baby I'm the bottom, you're the top.

The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks about them.