Iain Banks Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Iain Banks

Iain Banks Quotes & Sayings

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Libertarianism. A simple-minded right-wing ideology ideally suited to those unable or unwilling to see past their own sociopathic self-regard. — Iain Banks

Money is a sign of poverty. — Iain M. Banks

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

All reality seemed to hinge on those infinitesimal bundles of meaning. — Iain M. Banks

I think the easiest people to fool are ourselves. Fooling ourselves may even be a necessary precondition for fooling others. — Iain Banks

The ignobility of thought and action that desperation born of indigence produces. — Iain M. Banks

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

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

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

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

Division was the only order. — Iain M. Banks

There is only darkness, starless and complete. The waves glitter like a million dull knives. — Iain Banks

Fuck every cause that ends in murder and children crying. — Iain Banks

I held my crotch, closed my eyes and repeated my secret catechism. — Iain Banks

We're not in prison, we're not junkies and we're not Young Tories ... it's no small achievement. — Iain Banks

I'm not a great believer in awards-of course the fact that I've never won one has nothing to do with it at all! — Iain Banks

Soon equates to good, later to worse, Uagen Zlepe, scholar. Therefore, immediacy. — Iain Banks

Sometimes the thoughts and feelings I had didn't really agree with each other, so I decided I must be lots of different people inside my brain. — Iain Banks

Look on the happy side, think of the good things. Hadn't it been clever? Yes, it had. — Iain Banks

Looking at me, you'd never guess I'd killed three people. It isn't fair. — Iain Banks

You like music, Mr. Gurgeh?" Hamin asked, leaning over to the man. Gurgeh nodded. "Well, a little does no harm. — Iain Banks

All reality is a game. — Iain Banks

I'm an only child so am happy with my own company and I don't really get lonely. — Iain Banks

Probably the most blood came when I used a cheese grater on his knees. — Iain Banks

As a writer, you get to play, you get alter time, you get to come up with the smart lines and the clever comebacks you wish you'd thought of. — Iain Banks

Poor Eric came home to see his brother, only to find (Zap!Pow!Dams burst!Bombs go off!Wasps fry:ttssss!) he's got a sister. — Iain Banks

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

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. — Iain M. Banks

Ancient, vicious, discredited ideas backed with adolescent war mania. It's — Iain M. Banks

Happily, I am not human, Parinherm thought, and this is only a simulation. — Iain M. Banks

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

My enemy is twice dead, and I still have him. — Iain Banks

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

Reason shapes the future, but superstition infects the present. — Iain M. Banks

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

One should never regret one's excesses, only one's failures of nerve. — Iain M. Banks

Even galaxy-spanning anarchist utopias of stupefying full-spectrum civilisational power have turf wars within their unacknowledged militaries. — Iain Banks

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

Very little matters very much and almost nothing matters greatly. — Iain M. Banks

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. — Iain M. Banks

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

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

We are such pathetic, fleshy things, so short lived, swarming and confused. — Iain M. Banks

You're a wicked man." "Thank you. It's taken years of diligent practice. — Iain Banks

Half the fun of writing a novel is finding out from other people later on what you actually meant. — Iain Banks

Well," he sighed to no one in particular, and looked up into yet another alien sky. "Here we are again. — Iain Banks

I am not answering these questions anymore," I said to him as I took my plate to the sink. "We should have gone metric years ago."
Iain Banks — Iain Banks

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

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

You have to have something worth saying and then the ability to say it- writing's a double skill, really. — Iain Banks

Science fiction is trying to find alternative ways of looking at realities. — Iain Banks

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

bipedal, oxygen-breathing carboniform — Iain M. Banks

The bomb lives only as it is falling. — Iain M. Banks

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

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

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

My point has always been that, ever since the Industrial Revolution, science fiction has been the most important genre there is. — Iain Banks

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

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

This isn't Ospin! These aren't the Dataversities! — Iain M. Banks

I think we need politicians; we need people who want to serve. — Iain Banks

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

Most mainstream male fiction is littered with heroines, and female characters are basically so great, you want to fall in love with them. — Iain Banks

My gratitude extends beyond the limits of my capacity to express it, — Iain Banks

After doing extensive research, I can definitely tell you that single malt whiskies are good to drink. — Iain Banks

I still have some of my old University essays, and I do still have my drawing book from primary year seven. — Iain Banks

jammed inside the bastard for three hours.'). And that bridge, the bridge . . . have to make a pilgrimage to — Iain Banks

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

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

I am not being obtuse. You are being paranoid. — Iain Banks

In so much of politics you're not allowed to disagree with what's been agreed. — Iain Banks

And I confess that, like a child, I cry. Ah, self-pity; I think we are at our most honest and sincere when we feel sorry for ourselves. — Iain Banks

I wouldn't like to be a character in one of my books! — Iain Banks

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

When in Rome; burn it. — Iain M. Banks

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

A lot of what the 'Culture' is about is a reaction to all the science fiction I was reading in my very early teens. — Iain Banks

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

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. — Iain M. Banks

It made me feel good to know that I could see him and he couldn't see me, and that I was aware and fully conscious and he wasn't — Iain Banks

I think the future stopped looking American when you think back to Blade Runner and Neuromancer, when it started to look more Japanese. — Iain Banks

You need to read more science fiction. Nobody who reads science fiction comes out with this crap about the end of history — Iain Banks

Bob-nodded toward the open module door. After you. — Iain M. Banks

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 — Iain M. Banks

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

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

The smell was that of a sewer under an abattoir. — Iain M. Banks

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

Intellectual achievement. The exercise of skill. Human feeling. — Iain Banks

It hung above the livid, bruised land like an admonition — Iain Banks

'Dead Air' is full of rants; it's a rant-based book. Yes, it's self-indulgence. I plead guilty; mea culpa. — Iain Banks

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

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. — Iain M. Banks

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

A guilty system recognizes no innocents. — Iain M. Banks

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

Political correctness is what right-wing bigots call what everybody else calls being polite — Iain Banks

Escape is a consumer goods like another — Iain Banks

I still find it hard to understand that anyone could argue that you can't have machines that exhibit consciousness. — Iain Banks