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

Iain Banks

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Iain Banks
Age: 59 †
Born: 1954
Born: February 16
Died: 2013
Died: June 9
Author
Novelist
Philosopher
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Iain M. Banks
Iain Menzies Banks
Full
Unacknowledged
Within
Utopias
War
Turf
Power
Utopia
Even
Anarchist
Galaxy
Spectrum
Spanning
Wars
Stupefying

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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.
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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
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I'm from out of town, he said breezily. This was true. He'd never been within a hundred light-years of the place.
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Soon equates to good, later to worse, Uagen Zlepe, scholar. Therefore, immediacy.
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The History Of The Universe In Three Words CHAPTER ONE Bang! CHAPTER TWO sssss CHAPTER THREE crunch. THE END
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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.
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Intellectual achievement. The exercise of skill. Human feeling.
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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.
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If this goes badly and I make a crater, I want it named after me!
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Science fiction has its own history, its own legacy of what's been done, what's been superseded, what's so much part of the furniture it's practically part of the fabric now, what's become no more than a joke...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.
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I wouldn't like to be a character in one of my books!
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What is all your studying worth, all your learning, all your knowledge, if it doesn't lead to wisdom? And what's wisdom but knowing what is right, and what is the right thing to do?
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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
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I think the future stopped looking American when you think back to Blade Runner and Neuromancer, when it started to look more Japanese.
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I'm saying with very few exceptions nothing lasts forever, and among those exceptions, no work or thought of man is numbered.
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A lot of what the 'Culture' is about is a reaction to all the science fiction I was reading in my very early teens.
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Writing is like everything else: the more you do it the better you get. Don't try to perfect as you go along, just get to the end of the damn thing. Accept imperfections. Get it finished and then you can go back. If you try to polish every sentence there's a chance you'll never get past the first chapter.
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My gratitude extends beyond the limits of my capacity to express it.
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Most mainstream male fiction is littered with heroines, and female characters are basically so great, you want to fall in love with them.
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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.
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