Iain Banks quotes - page 5

She supposed she ought to feel impressed that Genar-Hofoen was sticking to his principles in the face of imminent death-and she did feel a little admiration-but mostly she just thought he was being stupid. (Iain Banks)
He would give up then, and console himself with something she'd said: that you could not love what you fully understood. Love, she maintained, was a process, not a state. Held still, it withered. He wasn't too sure about all that; he seemed to have found a calm clear serenity in himself he hadn't even known was there, thanks to her.
Iain 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 Banks
"I believe in Providence, mistress.” "But when you say Providence, do you really mean god?” "No, mistress. I don't believe in any of the old gods. No one does any more. No one of sense, at any rate. Providence is the rule of laws, mistress,” I said.
Iain Banks
But there we are. Some things never do make perfect sense. There must be some explanation, and it is perhaps a little like the Doctrine of the Perfect Partner. We must be content to know that she exists, somewhere in the world, and try not to care overmuch that we will probably never meet her.
Iain Banks
The only sin is selfishness.
Iain Banks
I've been thinking about the war a lot recently, and I think I've decided it's wrong. We are defeating ourselves in waging it, will destroy ourselves by winning it.
Iain Banks
All the usual rules of uprising realpolitik still apply, especially that concerning the peculiar of dialectic of dissent which-simply stated-dictates that in all but the most dedicatedly repressive hegemonies, if in a sizable population there are one hundred rebels, all of whom are then rounded up and killed, the number of rebels present at the end of the day is not zero, and not even one hundred, but two hundred or three hundred or more; an equation based on human nature which seem often to baffle the military and political mind.
Iain Banks
It was like living half your life in a tiny, stuffy, warm gray box, and being moderately happy in there because you knew no better...and then discovering a little hole in one corner of the box, a tiny opening which you could get a finger into, and tease and pull at, so that eventually you created a tear, which led to a greater tear, which led to the box falling apart around you...so that you stepped out of the tiny box's confines into startlingly cool, clear fresh air and found yourself on top of a mountain, surrounded by deep valleys, sighing forests, soaring peaks, glittering lakes, sparkling snowfields and a stunning, breathtakingly blue sky. And that, of course, wasn't even the start of the real story, that was more like the breath that is drawn in before the first syllable of the first word of the first paragraph of the first chapter of the first book of the first volume of the story.
Iain Banks
Just as I need never wonder what it is like to die, so I need never wonder what it is like to kill, Ziller, because I have done it, and it is a wasteful, graceless, worthless and hateful thing to have to do.
Iain Banks
Did you know that true subjective time is measured in the minimum duration of demonstrably separate thoughts? (Iain Banks)
Are you really as ignorant as you appear, Trelsen, or is this some sort of bizarre act, perhaps even meant to be amusing?
Iain Banks
Is your own existence so replete with equanimity you find no outlet for worry except on behalf of others?
Iain Banks
The background to the war, my studious Homomdan pal, is three thousand years of ruthless oppression, cultural imperialism, economic exploitation, systematic torture, sexual tyranny and the cult of greed ingrained almost to the point of genetic inheritability.
Iain Banks
We always want more, he thought, we always take our past successes for granted and assume they point the way to future triumphs. But the universe does not have our own best interests at heart, and to assume for a moment that it does, ever did or ever might is to make the most calamitous and hubristic of mistakes.
Iain Banks
Of course they aren't ready for it, of course we'll spoil the place. Are they any more ready for World War Three? You seriously think we could mess the place up more than they're doing at the moment? When they're not actually out slaughtering each other they're inventing ingenious new ways to massacre each other more efficiently in the future, and when they're not doing that they're committing speciescide, from the Amazon to Borneo... or filling the seas with shit, or the air, or the land. They could hardly make a better job of vandalizing their own planet if we gave them lessons.
Iain Banks
Believe me; democracy in action can be an unpretty sight.
Iain Banks
I'm supposed to be at this sort of thing but even I find it pretty damn tedious at times. Still, receptions and parties are pan-cultural, so we're told. I've never been sure whether to be reassured or appalled by that.
Iain Banks
Ultimately the galaxy, indeed the sum of the universe in its entirety, was mostly nothing; average it all out and it made a pretty good vacuum. But within the foci of matter there were the systems, the stars and planets and habitats-what a cornucopia of life was there!
Iain Banks
A good death. Well, he thought, given that you had to die, why want a bad one?
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)
I still find it hard to understand that anyone could argue that you can't have machines that exhibit consciousness.
Iain Banks
You have to have something worth saying and then the ability to say it- writing's a double skill, really.
Iain Banks
As long as a film stays unmade, the book is entirely yours, it belongs to the writer. As soon as you make it into a film, suddenly more people see it than have ever read the book.
Iain Banks
Technology determines the possibilities of society. It doesn't matter whether you start out from a fascist state or a communist state or a free-market state.
Iain Banks