"Sir Michael Marsh: (Ignoring Matt) At the heart of any nuclear power station is a nuclear reactor. The reactor is basically a massive concrete box - and it is in here that our controlled explosion takes place. The uranium is surrounded by long sticks called control rods. When you lift up the control rods, the explosion starts. And the higher you lift them, the more powerful the explosion becomes. The reactor is the most dangerous part of the station. You have to remember what happened at Chernobyl, in Russia. One mistake here and you risk what is known as an excursion, an explosion which might kill hundreds or even thousands of people and destroy a vast area of land for years. When the government began to think about building nuclear stations, about fifty years ago, they set up a number of experimental stations where they could study reactors in action and make sure they were safe. Omega One was the first of these experiments and I helped design and build it. It ran for less than eighteen months. And after we'd finished with it, we shut it down and left it to rot in the pine forest thaty surrounds it."

"Sir Michael Marsh: Yes, Mr Cole. The radiation would indeed kill you. Which is why, when uranium is moved, it is carried in heavy, lead-lined boxes."

"Richard Cole: Why did you build it there?"

"Do you think that someone is trying to start up Omega One?"

"Matt: (Taken aback) I go to school in Lesser Malling."

"(To Matt) Are you interested in phillumeny, young man?"

"Richard Cole: Maybe someone wants to get it running again."

"I'm going to put them down."

"(Sarcastically, to Professor Dravid) Let me get this straight, Professor. A very long time ago, the world was ruled by evil creatures called the Old Ones. However, five kids appeared and threw them out. The kids erected a barrier, which became known as Raven's Gate. Unfortunately the stones that marked the gate were knocked down by Medieval peasants who didn't know any better. But that doesn't matter that much because the gate is still there after all. Is that about it?"

"Nice dogs... Stay!"

"You seem like a nice enough kid, Matthew."

"(About Matt's trainers) Are you kidding? The washing machine hasn't been built that could handle all that muck!"

"But the police came and nothing was there and so, maybe, you imagined the whole thing."

"If I told you everything I'm about to tell you now, my reputation, everything I've worked for, would disappear overnight. It makes no sense. Not in the real world, anyway. Susan Ashwood may have seemed eccentric to you. You might have thought she was a fraud. However, I'm telling you she was right. There is another world. We are surrounded by it. There is an alternative history as alive in the streets of twenty-first century London as it was many thousands of years ago, when it all began. But only cranks and lunatics are meant to believe in it, because you see, that way everyone feels safer..."

"Matt: ...Not a lot."

"Sir Michael Marsh: Well, let me tell you a bit about it. I'm sure you don't want a physics lesson, but you have to understand. We'll start with the nuclear bomb. You know, of course, what that is."

"Sir Michael Marsh: I'm sorry?"

"How Matthew? ...Do you watch a lot of TV?"

"Sir Michael Marsh: An impossibility, I'm afraid. (To Matt) How much do you know about nuclear power, young man?"

"Sir Michael Marsh: A nuclear bomb contains devastating power. It can destroy an entire city, as it did, in the last war, at Hiroshima. In tests in the Nevada Desert, a small bomb blew out a crater so deep, you could have fitted the entire Empire State Building into it. The power of the bomb is the energy released in the explosion. And that energy comes from splitting the atom. Are you with me so far? A nuclear power station works in much the same way. It splits the atom in a metal called uranium but instead of producing an explosion, which is uncontrolled, the energy is released gradually, in the form of heat. The heat is fantastic. It turns water into steam, which then turns the turbines of an energy generator and out comes electricity. That's all a nuclear power station does. It turns water into electricity."

"Richard Cole: Matt couldn't see very much in the darkness, Sir Michael. But he said that the men were wearing strange, bulky clothes. I wondered if they might have been radiation suits."

"Sir Michael Marhs:And what conclusion have you drawn from all this, Mr Cole?"

"Sir Michael Marsh: You think that someone is trying to start up Omega One?"

"You're just lucky I didn't stay for another pint."

"Well look... What you've just told me is complete... Crap! Lanes that go round in circles| Strange looks from the villagers! I know I said I wanted a story, Matt! But I didn't mean a fairy story!"

"Richard Cole: It is a possibility."

"Matt: What's wrong with coal?"

"Sir Michael Marsh: You say there were electric lights at the power station? And the boy heard a humming noise?"

"Richard Cole: I've been through. I'm meant to cover it. Me, Kate and Julia - They're the girls you saw downstairs - We've all got our own territories. I've got Lesser Malling. Lucky me!"

"Richard Cole: Yes sir."

"Richard Cole: You said you were staying at Lesser Malling."

"(To Matt) There were some parts of your story... Well, I couldn't get them out of your head. So I went by to investigate."

"Matt: Yes. Do you know it?"

"Sir Michael Marsh: And he saw a lorry. Unloading some sort of box?"

"OK, yes. I've heard of Omega One. They built it as a sort of prototype... Before they started building the real things. But they shut it down before I was born. There's nothing there now. It's just an empty shell."

"Do you really think it's so crazy to draw parallels between the power of the atom bomb and the power of black magic? Do you really think that a weapon capable of destroying cities in seconds and killing thousands of people is so far removed from the Devil's work? To me it was obvious. I saw that the two different powers could be bought together and do what they had never done before."

"Richard Cole: Yes."

"Richard Cole: And you're doing a school project?"

"That's when I heard someone shouting for help and then I found you."

"Richard Cole: What sort of help?"

"Sir Michael Marsh: Gas, oil, coal... They're too expensive. And one day they'll run out. But uranium is incredible stuff. One tiny piece of it, if you held it in your hand, has enough power to keep a million electric heaters running non-stop for twenty-four hours."

"Richard Cole: Except it would kill you... If you held it in your hand."

"Matt: Yes."

"They scare me more than any other fictional creature out there because they break all the rules. Werewolves and vampires and mummies and giant sharks, you have to go look for them. My attitude is if you go looking for them, no sympathy. But zombies come to you. Zombies don't act like a predator; they act like a virus, and that is the core of my terror. A predator is intelligent by nature, and knows not to overhunt its feeding ground. A virus will just continue to spread, infect and consume, no matter what happens. It's the mindlessness behind it."

"I love my country enough to admit that one of our national flaws is isolationism. I wanted to combat that in World War Z and maybe give my fellow Americans a window into the political and cultural workings of other nations. Yes, in World War Z some nations come out as winners and some as losers, but isn't that the case in real life as well? I wanted to base my stories on the historical actions of the countries in question, and if it offends some individuals, then maybe they should reexamine their own nation's history"

"The lack of rational thought has always scared me when it came to zombies, the idea that there is no middle ground, no room for negotiation. That has always terrified me. Of course that applies to terrorists, but it can also apply to a hurricane, or flu pandemic, or the potential earthquake that I grew up with living in L.A. Any kind of mindless extremism scares me, and we're living in some pretty extreme times."

"The movie and the book? [They] really don't have a lot in common. They got a great title!"

"You wanna know who lost World War Z? Whales. I guess they never really had a chance, not with several million hungry boat people and half the world's navies converted to fishing fleets. [...] So the next time someone tries to tell you about how the true losses of this war are "our innocence" or "part of our humanity"... Whatever, bro. Tell it to the whales."

"I wonder what future generations will say about us. My grandparents suffered through the Depression, World War II, then came home to build the greatest middle class in human history. Lord knows they weren't perfect, but they sure came closest to the American dream. Then my parents' generation came along and fucked it all up--the baby boomers, the "me" generation. And then you got us. Yeah, we stopped the zombie menace, but we're the ones who let it become a menace in the first place. At least we're cleaning up our own mess, and maybe that's the best epitaph to hope for: "Generation Z, they cleaned up their own mess.""

"Last week I was listening to the radio and happened to hear [name withheld for legal reasons]. He was doing his usual thing- fart jokes and adolescent sexuality- and I remember thinking, "This man survived and my parents didn't.""