261 Quotes by Max Brooks

Those poor things. They sounded so scared and angry. And why wouldn’t they? What else should they feel when some horrible person released them into an environment they weren’t born for?

I think the human mind isn’t comfortable with mysteries. We’re always looking for answers to the unexplained. And if an answer can’t come from facts, we’ll try to cobble one together from old stories.

The only term I can think of is “bloodlust,” because that’s what it sounds like when chimps tear a monkey apart. It’s not like any other kill you’d ever see, not like when a leopard brings down a gazelle or even sharks rip into a seal. Those are cold, mechanical. Apes go crazy. Hopping and dancing. Don’t tell me they don’t enjoy it.

Conventional executions might have reinforced discipline, might have restored order from the top down, but by making us all accomplices, they held us together not just by fear, but by guilt as well.

We relinquished our freedom that day, and we were more than happy to see it go. From that moment on we lived in true freedom, the freedom to point to someone else and say “They told me to do it! It’s their fault, not mine.” The freedom, God help us, to say “I was only following orders.”-World War Z.

If you had a loved one, a family member, a child, who was infected, and you thought there was a shred of hope in some other country, wouldn’t you do everything in your power to get there? Wouldn’t you want to believe there was hope?

Every rich man’s house has a servant’s entrance.

We were taught that, even if we wore a uniform, that our first sworn duty was to our conscience, no matter what the consequences.

Only one could have foreseen this, and I don’t believe in him anymore.