Iain M. Banks quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Iain M. Banks

Iain M. Banks Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Iain M. Banks on Wise Famous Quotes.

Money is a sign of poverty.

I'm saying with very few exceptions nothing lasts forever, and among those exceptions, no work or thought of man is numbered.

But such consummate skill, such ability, such adaptability, such numbing ruthlessness, such a use of weapons when anything could become weapon . . .

All reality seemed to hinge on those infinitesimal bundles of meaning.

The ignobility of thought and action that desperation born of indigence produces.

Escape is a commodity like anything else.

I'm a fucking starship; I'm allowed to cheat.

Mocking the wisdom that comes with age is a fit sport only for those who expect never to attain much of it themselves

[T]here can be a form of vanity in grief that is indulged rather than suffered.

The Fate had moved, or had been moved, thirty light years in less than a picosecond.

Living either never has any point, or is always its own point; being a naturally cheery soul, I lean towards the latter.

I had nightmares I thought were really horrible until I woke up and remembered what reality was at the moment.

Division was the only order.

He might come in useful.'
'Yeah. So's a broken leg if you want to kick yourself in the back of the head.

Neeporlax presented something of a contrast.

What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead?

Patience can be a means of letting matters mature to a proper state for action, not just a way of letting time slip away.

Faith is belief without reason; we operate on reason and nothing but. I have zero faith in my crew, just absolute confidence.

one may be partially owned by another or others by having to sell one's labor or talents to somebody with the means to buy them. In

Reason shapes the future, but superstition infects the present.

the rich just bribe their way out. So yes, as far as the rulers are concerned, it works.

Conscious cooperation was more efficient than feral competition?

But just because something does not have an ending doesn't mean it doesn't have a conclusion.

There came a point when if a conspiracy was that powerful and subtle it became pointless to worry about it.

Ancient, vicious, discredited ideas backed with adolescent war mania. It's

Because I do enjoy winning, because I do have something nobody can copy, something nobody else can have; I'm me; I'm one of the best.

Thing about emergencies," he said, sounding weary. "Rarely occur when they'd be convenient.

The trick, he supposed, was never to lose sight of the theoretical possibility while not for a moment taking the idea remotely seriously.

He thought the common people must be remarkably stupid if they believed all this nonsense.

The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.

it was the night when people got paid and didn't have to work the next day, and so by tradition went out to get drunk and into fights. Then

I had high hopes for that girl, but too much of that sort of nonsense and I think her intelligence will explosively dismantle

His jaw was slack and his mouth open, and he wondered if perhaps he would drown eventually; drowned by the falling rain.

The swirling mist lay in the bottom of such great bowls like a broth of dreams.

Sometimes what goes without saying is best said anyway.

Us with our busy, busy little lives, finding no better way to pass our years than in competitive disdain.

I don't need a tie for gravitas.

Strange that people are happy to adopt epithets they would fight to the death to throw off had they been imposed.

[A]ll her hardships had been self-inflicted and recreational in the past.

Like a berserk raptor thrown into a nest of hibernating kittens ...

Myself," said the drone sniffily, "I have never been able to see what virtue there could be in something that was eighty percent water.

Apparently I am what is known as an Unreliable Narrator, though of course if you believe everything you're told you deserve whatever you get.

If this goes badly and I make a crater, I want it named after me!

Holse wasn't about to get involved in any theological arguments. He looked serious and nodded, hoping this would do.

That's why you can destroy them, win an argument, prove the other person wrong, and still they believe what they did in the first place." He

The History Of The Universe In Three Words
CHAPTER ONE
Bang!
CHAPTER TWO
sssss
CHAPTER THREE
crunch.
THE END

In life you hoped to do what you could but mostly you did what you were told and that was the end of it.

[I]f I suffered only one fool gladly, I assure you it would be you.

The smell was that of a sewer under an abattoir.

Twice, in the depths of the sleeping ship, he almost killed somebody. One of those times, it was somebody else,

Individual is obsolete. That's why life is so comfortable for us all. We don't matter, so we're safe. No one person can have any real effect anymore.

The birds disturbed from the network of waterways beneath the barges wheeled in the sky, calling plaintively.

I knew I might die, but I was prepared to risk that; it was almost romantic. Somehow it never occurred to me it might entail privation and suffering.

had nightmares I thought were really horrible until I woke up and remembered what reality was like at the moment,

A guilty system recognizes no innocents.

Common misconception that; that fun is relaxing. If it is, you're not doing it right.

But then, as she knew too well, the more fondly we imagine something will last forever, the more ephemeral it often proves to be.

The good soldier did as he was told, and if he had any sense at all volunteered for nothing, especially promotion.

This isn't Ospin! These aren't the Dataversities!

We are a race prone to monsters, she thought, and when we produce one we worship it.

Theirs is a civilization of deprivation; ours of finely balanced satisfaction ever teetering on the brink of excess.

just one more species, which would grow and expand and then, finding the plateau phase all non-suicidal species eventually arrived at, settle down.

Some problems were generational; you just had to wait for the relevant elders to die off and be replaced with more progressive types.

When in Rome; burn it.

He felt great. spa'dassins digladiate; ziffidae and xebecs contend! gol-iard dunking!

then there's nothing worse I can wish on you than to be exactly the fuckhead you so obviously are.

Happily, I am not human, Parinherm thought, and this is only a simulation.

bipedal, oxygen-breathing carboniform

Obsession is just what those too timorous to follow an idea through to its logical conclusion call determination.

So basically you're sticking around to watch us all fuck up ?"
"Yes. It's one of life's few guaranteed constants.

We are such pathetic, fleshy things, so short lived, swarming and confused.

The Idirans themselves had evolved on their planet Idir as the top monster from a whole planetful of monsters.

Well, in the end, there was no helping this. Sometimes you just had to adopt the attitude summed up by, Too bad.

The bomb lives only as it is falling.

A Mind could hold any set of facts and opinions it wanted without having to tell anybody what it knew or thought, or why.

What's one more meaningless act of violence on that zoo of a planet?
It would be appropriate.
When in Rome; burn it.

One believed what one was told to believe, what it made sense to believe. Unless one was a foreigner, of course, or a philosopher.

One should never regret one's excesses, only one's failures of nerve.

It was rude, insulting and frequently infuriating, but it made such a refreshing change from the awful politeness of most people.

Very little matters very much and almost nothing matters greatly.

You could find out most things, if you knew the right questions to ask. Even if you didn't, you could still find out a lot.

Bob-nodded toward the open module door. After you.

Just because that was the start of a thousand sentimental stories didn't mean that it didn't actually happen.

All you ever were was a little bit of the universe, thinking to itself. Very specific; this bit, here, right now.