Iain Banks quotes - page 7

You get so caught up in what you're writing - action sequences tend to do that more than anything else because you're living it, and feeling for your characters. (Iain Banks)
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. View quote
Iain Banks
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. View quote
Iain Banks
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. View quote
Iain Banks
I think a lot of people are frightened of technology and frightened of change, and the way to deal with something you're frightened of is to make fun of it. That's why science fiction fans are dismissed as geeks and nerds. View quote
Iain Banks
In so much of politics you're not allowed to disagree with what's been agreed. View quote
Iain Banks
Smell is a very animal thing, almost reptilian, where the more cerebral things like reading less so. View quote
Iain Banks
There is a quite a lot of effort involved but I find action sequences some of the quickest to write and the most fun. View quote
Iain Banks
Even in my side of the world, I've been in publishing for what, 25 or 26 years, and it's gone from being a gentlemen's club to being a few big players, and it's very corporatised. View quote
Iain Banks
I think we need politicians; we need people who want to serve. View quote
Iain 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)
I deliberately keep myself apart from a lot of stuff; I don't Tweet, I don't do Facebook, I don't blog, and that's largely because I spend my working life staring at a screen and hitting a keyboard, I am trying to cut down on that, not increase it. View quote
Iain Banks
I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and plots and characters organised into this narrative framework. View quote
Iain Banks
I'm an only child so am happy with my own company and I don't really get lonely. View quote
Iain Banks
I just come up with the stories and write them as well as I can. There's not really a great deal of strokey-beard thinking going on. View quote
Iain 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. View quote
Iain Banks
Dead Air' is full of rants; it's a rant-based book. Yes, it's self-indulgence. I plead guilty; mea culpa. View quote
Iain Banks
Science fiction has its own history, its own legacy of what's been done, what's been superseded, what's so much part of the furniture it's practically part of the fabric now, what's become no more than a joke... and so on. It's just plain foolish, as well as comically arrogant, to ignore all this, to fail to do the most basic research. View quote
Iain Banks
I don't really do themes. I might accidentally, but themes are an emergent phenomena of the writing of the book, of just trying to get a story out there. View quote
Iain Banks
Tell me, suit, don't you wonder if it's all worth it?' "If what's all worth what?” it says, and I can hear that condescending tone in its voice again. "You know; living. Is it worth all the... bother?” "No.” "No?” "No, I don't ever wonder about it.” "Why not?” I'm keeping my questions short as we walk, conserving energy and breath. "I don't need to wonder about that. It's not important.” "Not important?” "It's an irrelevant question. We live; that's enough. View quote
Iain Banks
They spend time. That's just it. They spend time traveling. The time weighs heavily on them because they lack any context, any valid framework for their lives. They persist in hoping that something they think they'll find in the place they're heading for will somehow provide them with a fulfilment they feel certain they deserve and yet have never come close to experiencing.” Ziller frowned and tapped at his pipe bowl. "Some travel forever in hope and are serially disappointed. Others, slightly less self-deceiving, come to accept that the process of travelling itself offers, if not fulfilment, then relief from the feeling that they should be feeling fulfilled. (Iain Banks)
But even if all the other stuff seems a bit esoteric, just think of all those other avatars at all those other gatherings, concerts, dances, ceremonies, parties and meals; think of all that talk, all those ideas, all that sparkle and wit!” "Think of all that bullshit, the nonsense and non-sequiturs, the self-aggrandisement and self-deception, the boring stupid nonsense, the pathetic attempts to impress or ingratiate, the slow-wittedness, the incomprehension and the incomprehensible, the gland-addled meanderings and general suffocating dullness. View quote
Iain Banks
A guilty system recognizes no innocents. As with any power apparatus which thinks everybody's either for it or against it, we're against it. You would be too, if you thought about it. The very way you think places you among its enemies. This might not be your fault, because every society imposes some of its values on those raised within it, but the point is that some societies try to maximize that effect, and some try to minimize it. You come from one of the latter and you're being asked to explain yourself to one of the former. Prevarication will be more difficult than you imagine; neutrality is probably impossible. You cannot choose not to have the politics you do; they are not some separate set of entities somehow detachable from the rest of your being; they are a function of your existence. I know that and they know that; you had better accept it. View quote
Iain Banks
Roundly insulting one's superiors behind their backs was one of the perks of being inferior, Choubris held. View quote
Iain Banks
This version felt like the truth, she thought; close enough to the myths and legends of her own people, but less self-serving, less dramatically glorious, more equivocal in its moral implications. View quote
Iain Banks