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The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10) QUOTES

The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10) QUOTES

1 " It seemed perverse to some, but for all their apparent militarism the Gzilt had remained peaceful over many millenia; it was the avowedly peaceful Culture that had , within living memory, taken part in an all-out galactic war against another civilisation. "

― Iain M. Banks , The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10)

2 " She'd asked him what it was like to be in there, doing nothing but then being woken up to speak to somebody you couldn't see. He'd said that it was like being woken from a deep and satisfying sleep, to be asked questions while you kept your eyes closed. He was quite happy. Sight was over-rated anyway. "

― Iain M. Banks , The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10)

3 " [I]t was really only in the generation or two before hers that the idea had started to traverse the spectrum of likelihood in the popular imagination, beginning at unthinkable, progressing to absurd, then going from possible but unlikely to probable and likely, before eventually arriving – round about the time of her birth – at seemingly inevitable. "

― Iain M. Banks , The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10)

4 " Oh, adjust yourself. You people have spent ten millennia playing at soldiers while becoming ever more dedicated civilians. We've spent the last thousand years trying hard to stay civilian while refining the legacy of a won galactic war. "

― Iain M. Banks , The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10)

5 " One should never regret one's excesses, only one's failures of nerve. "

― Iain M. Banks , The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10)

6 " One should never mistake pattern for meaning. "

― Iain M. Banks , The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10)

7 " There was something comforting about having a vast hydrogen furnace burning millions of tons of material a second at the centre of a solar system. It was cheery. "

― Iain M. Banks , The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10)

8 " Once one survives the trough that comes with the understanding that people are going to go on being stupid and cruel to each other no matter what, probably for ever – if one survives; many people choose suicide at this point instead – then one starts to take the attitude, Oh well, never mind. "

― Iain M. Banks , The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10)

9 " One should never mistake pattern … for meaning. "

― Iain M. Banks , The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10)

10 " Thing about emergencies,” he said, sounding weary. “Rarely occur when they’d be convenient. "

― Iain M. Banks , The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10)

11 " Happily, I am not human, Parinherm thought, and this is only a simulation. "

― Iain M. Banks , The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10)

12 " However, there is another reaction to the never-ending plethora of unoriginal idiocies that life throws up with such erratic reliability, besides horror and despair.” “What’s that?” “A kind of glee. Once one survives the trough that comes with the understanding that people are going to go on being stupid and cruel to each other no matter what, probably for ever – if one survives; many people choose suicide at this point instead – then one starts to take the attitude, Oh well, never mind. It would be far preferable if things were better, but they’re not, so let’s make the most of it. Let’s see what fresh fuckwittery the dolts can contrive to torment themselves with this time. "

― Iain M. Banks , The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10)

13 " Sometimes what goes without saying is best said anyway. "

― Iain M. Banks , The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10)

14 " obsession is just what those too timorous to follow an idea through to its logical conclusion call determination. "

― Iain M. Banks , The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10)

15 " faith is belief without reason; we operate on reason and nothing but. I have zero faith in my crew, just absolute confidence. "

― Iain M. Banks , The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10)

16 " Meaning is everywhere. There is always meaning. Or at least all things show a disturbing tendency to have meaning ascribed to them when intelligent creatures are present. It’s just that there’s no final Meaning, with a capital M. Though the illusion that there might be is comforting for a certain class of mind. "

― Iain M. Banks , The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10)

17 " Where do you keep your memories of love, past lovers?” QiRia looked at her. “In my head, of course.” He looked away. “There are not so many of those, anyway,” he said, voice a little quieter. “Loving becomes harder, the longer you live, and I have lived a very long time indeed.” He fixed his gaze on her again. “I’m sure it varies across species – some seem to do quite well with no idea of love at all – but you soon enough come to realise that love generally comes from a need within ourselves, and that the behaviour, the… expression of love is what is most important to us, not the identity, not the personality of the one who is loved. "

― Iain M. Banks , The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10)

18 " Thing about emergencies,” he said, sounding weary. “Rarely occur when they’d be convenient.” “May "

― Iain M. Banks , The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10)

19 " Promises take many shapes, and the more … momentous they are, the more they might look like threats. All great promises are threats, I suppose, to the way things have been until that point, to some aspect of our lives, and we all suddenly become conservative, even though we want and need what the promise holds, and look forward to the promised change at the same time. "

― Iain M. Banks , The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10)

20 " The Sublime. The almost tangible, entirely believable, mathematically verifiable nirvana just a few right-angle turns away from dear boring old reality: a vast, infinite, better-than-virtual ultra-existence with no Off switch, to which species and civilizations had been hauling their sorry tired-with-it-all behinds off to since - the story went - the galaxy had still been in metaphorical knee socks. "

― Iain M. Banks , The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture #10)