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Iain Banks QUOTES

Iain Banks QUOTES

1 " 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

2 " 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 , The Business

3 " Anyway, you can't leave her like that. You can't do that to the woman. She doesn't deserve it; nobody does. You don't belong to her and she doesn't belong to you, but you're both part of each other; if she got up and left now and walked away and you never saw each other again for the rest of your lives, and you lived an ordinary waking life for another fifty years, even so on your deathbed you would still know she was part of you. "

― Iain Banks

4 " Yes of course I know it's all a dream. Isn't everything? "

― Iain Banks

5 " In the end, he had to admit, he didn't really understand her. He didn't understand women. He didn't understand men. He didn't even understand children very well. All he really understood, he thought, was himself and the rest of the universe. Neither anything like completely, of course, but both well enough to know that what remained to be discovered would make sense; it would fit in, it could all be gradually and patiently fitted together a bit at a time, like an infinite jigsaw puzzle, with no straight edges to look for and no end in sight, but one in which there was always going to be somewhere for absolutely any piece to fit. "

― Iain Banks

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

― Iain Banks

7 " it is an ocean of burning oil I am cast adrift upon, no sea’s repose; I pass from waking agonies… to the semiconscious trance of torment in which the smaller, earlier, deeper rings of the brain know only that the nerves scream, the body aches, and there is no one to turn crying to for comfort. "

― Iain Banks

8 " To want more was not just childish, but cowardly, and somehow constpatory too. Death was change; it led to new chances, new vacancies, new niches and opportunities; it was not all loss. "

― Iain Banks

9 " The point is, there is no feasible excuse for what are, for what we have made of ourselves. We have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanaticism before fairness, and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others "

― Iain Banks , Complicity

10 " Oh, no, Cameron; I believe we're born free of sin and free of guilt. It's just that we all catch it, eventually. There are no clean rooms for morality, Cameron, no boys in bubbles kept in a guilt-free sterile zone. There are monasteries and nunneries, and people become recluses, but even that's just an elegant way of giving up. Washing one's hand didn't work two thousand years ago, and it doesn't work today. Involvement, Cameron, connection. "

― Iain Banks , Complicity

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

― Iain Banks , The Bridge

12 " there is both fear and comfort to be drawn from devils--the fear speaks for itself, the comfort comes from being able to absolve oneself of responsibility for one's actions. "

― Iain Banks , Whit

13 " This is so much like the old days. And, again, I have mixed feelings. In some ways it's good and comfortable to be fitting straight back in like I've never been away, but, on the other hand, I'm getting this constrictive feeling as well. It's the same places - like the bars and pubs on Friday night - the same people, the same conversations, the same arguments and the same attitudes. Five years away and not much seems to have changed. I can't decide if this is good or bad. "

― Iain Banks , Stonemouth

14 " All I said was that I thought it was a judgement from God that Blyth had first lost his leg and then had the replacement become the instrument of his downfall. All because of the rabbits. Eric, who was going through a religious phase at the time which I suppose I was to some extent copying, thought this was a terrible thing to say; God wasn't like that. I said the one I believed in was. "

― Iain Banks , The Wasp Factory

15 " Bright morning comes; the bloody-fingered dawn with zealous light sets seas of air ablaze and bends to earth another false beginning. My eyes open like cornflowers, stick, crusted with their own stale dew, then take that light. "

― Iain Banks , A Song of Stone

16 " ...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 , A Song of Stone

17 " I killed little Esmerelda because I felt I owed it to myself and to the world in general. I had, after all, accounted for two male children and thus done womankind something of a statistical favour. If I really had the courage of my convictions, I reasoned, I ought to redress the balance at least slightly. My cousin was simply the easiest and most obvious target. "

― Iain Banks , The Wasp Factory

18 " I switched the light out again. The room was totally dark, not even the starlight showing while my eyes adjusted. Perhaps I would ask for one of those LED alarm radios, though I’m very fond of my old brass alarm clock. Once I tied a wasp tot the striking-surface of each of the copper-coloured bells on top, where the little hammer would hit them in the morning when the alarm went off.
I always wake up before the alarm goes, so I got to watch. "

― Iain Banks , The Wasp Factory

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

― Iain Banks

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

― Iain Banks