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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.

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
Self
Common
Equip
First
Means
Indicated
Mean
Experience
Reliable
Sense
Extinction
Place
Avoiding
Wells
Accomplish
Firsts
Method
Well
Oneself

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Escape is a consumer goods like another
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I still have some of my old University essays, and I do still have my drawing book from primary year seven.
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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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My gratitude extends beyond the limits of my capacity to express it.
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I'm a devoted husband. That must strike you as totally deviant.
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There's an old Sysan saying that the soup of life is salty enough without adding tears to it.
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What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead?
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It was the day my grandmother exploded.
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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 an only child so am happy with my own company and I don't really get lonely.
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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.
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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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You need to read more science fiction. Nobody who reads science fiction comes out with this crap about the end of history
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The truth is not always useful, not always good. It’s like putting your faith in water. Yes, we need the rain, but too much can sweep you away in a flood and drown you. Like all great natural, elemental forces, the truth needs to be channeled, managed, controlled and intelligently, morally allocated.
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Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place - and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all - so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.
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Intellectual achievement. The exercise of skill. Human feeling.
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I wouldn't like to be a character in one of my books!
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I love writing and can't imagine not being able to do it. I want an easy life and if it had been difficult I wouldn't be doing it. I do admire writers who do it even though it costs them.
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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.
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There are no gods, we are told, so I must make my own salvation.
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