Iain Banks Quotes

Something in your voice tells me we approach the question of remuneration.

Empathize with stupidity and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot.

Mr Blawke always reminded me of a heron; I'm not sure why. Something to do with a sense of rapacious stillness, perhaps, and also the aura of one who knows time is on his side.

Torture is such a slippery slope; as soon as you allow a society or any legal system to do that, almost instantly you get a situation where people are being tortured for very trivial reasons.

There's an old Sysan saying that the soup of life is salty enough without adding tears to it.

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

In theory, I work an eight-hour day and a five-day week which means I can socialise with my pals who mostly have normal jobs like teaching and computer programming.

I remember being shocked when I discovered some of my school pals didn't have books in their homes. I thought it was like not having oxygen, or hot water.

I've always loved Scotland, and I'm not a huge fan of big cities, to be honest. I like them to dip into for a bit, but I'm not sure I would want to live in one again.

I am, as I have always been, of the opinion that while the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.

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

One should never mistake pattern for meaning.

My gratitude extends beyond the limits of my capacity to express it.

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

A guilty system recognizes no innocents.

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

One of your American professors said that to study religion was merely to know the mind of man, but if one truly wanted to know the mind of God, you must study physics.

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.

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

An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop.

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

...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.

Any theory which causes solipsism to seem just as likely an explanation for the phenomena it seeks to describe ought to be held in the utmost suspicion.

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

Maybe it wasn't anything remotely to do with religion, mysticism or metaphilosophy after all; maybe it was more banal; maybe it was just...accounting.

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

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!

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

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

There are no gods, we are told, so I must make my own salvation.

The combination of modern ordnance and outdated tactics had, as usual, created enormous casualties on both sides.

Perdition awaits at the end of a road constructed entirely from good intentions, the devil emerges from the details and hell abides in the small print.

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

I am not being obtuse. You are being paranoid.

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

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

Experience as well as common sense indicated that the most reliable method of avoiding self-extinction was not to equip oneself with the means to accomplish it in the first place.

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

Here, in the bare dark face of night A calm unhurried eye draws sight We see in what we think we fear The cloudings of our thought made clear

I just think people overvalue argument because they like to hear themselves talk.

Escape is a consumer goods like another

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

It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said. She laughed. 'Really?' The machine shrugged and let go of her hand. 'Oh, no. It's just something we tell ourselves.

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

It's a library, only the stupid or the evil are afraid of those

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

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

Reason shapes the future, but superstition infects the present.

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

It was the day my grandmother exploded.