Iain Banks Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

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

  Iain Banks

  Want, Craters, Ifs

  Iain M. Banks (2008). “Against A Dark Background”, p.199, Hachette UK

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• All our lives are symbols. Everything we do is part of a pattern we have at least some say in. The strong make their own patterns and influence other people's, the weak have their courses mapped out for them. The weak and the unlucky, and the stupid.

  Iain Banks

  Strong, Stupid, People

  Iain Banks (1984). “The wasp factory: a novel”, Scribner

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Iain Banks

  Men, Mind, Study

  Iain Banks (2001). “The Business: A Novel”, p.269, Simon and Schuster

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

  Iain Banks

  Stupid, Evil, Library

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

  Iain Banks

  Needs, Fiction, Ends

  14 Copy quote

• 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.

  Iain Banks

  Book, Home, School

  Interview With Sarah Kinson, www.theguardian.com. February 7, 2008.

  16 Copy quote

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

  Iain Banks

  Two, Bangs, Three

  5 Copy quote

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

  Iain Banks

  Research, Drink, Malt

  12 Copy quote

• I am not being obtuse. You are being paranoid.

  Iain Banks

  Paranoid

  Iain M. Banks (2008). “Excession”, p.144, Hachette UK

  8 Copy quote

• Empires are synonymous with centralized if occasionally schismatized hierarchical power structures in which influence is restricted to an economically privileged class retaining its advantages through usually a judicious use of oppression and skilled manipulation of both the society's information dissemination systems and its lesser as a rule nominally independent power systems. In short, it's all about dominance.

  Iain Banks

  Independent, Class, Use

  Iain M. Banks (2008). “The Player Of Games: A Culture Novel”, p.67, Hachette UK

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• "I think I know the real reason." "Which is?" "Alcohol in the dust clouds. Goddamn stuff is everywhere. Any lousy species ever invents the telescope and the spectroscope and starts looking in between the stars, what do they find?" He knocked the glass on the table. "Loads of stuff, but much of it alcohol." He drank from the glass. "Humanoids are the galaxy's way of trying to get rid of all that alcohol."

  Iain Banks

  Stars, Real, Thinking

  "Use of Weapons (The Culture, Book 3)". Book by Iain Banks (Chapter IX, p. 148), September 13, 1990.

  6 Copy quote

• The bomb lives only as it is falling.

  Iain Banks

  Fall, Bombs

  "Use of Weapons". Book by Iain Banks, www.theguardian.com. September 13, 1990.

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• I wouldn't like to be a character in one of my books!

  Iain Banks

  Book, Character

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

  Iain Banks

  Salvation, My Own

  "Use of Weapons (The Culture, Book 3)". Book by Iain Banks (Chapter V, p. 303), September 13, 1990.

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Clever, Smart, Play

  12 Copy quote

• Hersesy is denying the word of God, and the word of God is much more reliably expressed in the natural world as it’s revealed through reason and science than in what I have heard described wonderfully as “the giant book of Jewish fairy stories".

  Iain Banks

  Book, Fairy Stories, Giants

  "Sci-Fi Writer Iain Banks Talks Surface Detail's Hell, Creationist Heresy". Interview with Michael Parsons, www.wired.com. October 15, 2010.

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

  Iain Banks

  Achievement

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

  Iain Banks

  War, Anarchist, Utopia

  Iain Banks (2008). “Matter”, Orbit Books

  5 Copy quote

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

  Iain Banks

  Sky, Aliens, Wells

  Iain M. Banks (2008). “Use Of Weapons”, p.124, Hachette UK

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• Smell is a very animal thing, almost reptilian, where the more cerebral things like reading less so.

  Iain Banks

  Reading, Animal, Smell

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• 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.

  Iain Banks

  People, Legal System, Slippery Slope

  "Iain Banks: Even at my age I still have something to prove". Interview With Maxton Walker, www.theguardian.com. September 7, 2009.

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• Look at these humans! How could such glacial slowness even be called life? An age could pass, virtual empires rise and fall in the time they took to open their mouths to utter some new inanity!

  Iain Banks

  Fall, Age, Looks

  "Excession" by Iain Banks, Bantam Books hardcover edition, (p. 212), 1996.

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• 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.

  Iain Banks

  Normal, Morality, Opinion

  "Excession (The Culture, Book 5)". Book by Iain Banks (Chapter 8 "Killing Time", Section VII, p. 269), 1996.

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• 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.

  Iain Banks

  Encounters, Way, Problem

  "What are the great sentences in genre fiction?" Claire Armitstead, www.theguardian.com. March 27, 2014.

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• It was the day my grandmother exploded.

  Iain Banks

  Grandmother, My Grandmother

  Iain Banks (2008). “The Crow Road”, Macadam Cage Pub

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