Quote

...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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Feel
Confess
Feels
Sincere
Children
Pity
Think
Cry
Thinking
Sorry
Like
Honest
Child

More quotes by Iain Banks

Image
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
Image
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
Iain Banks
Image
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.
Iain Banks
Image
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said. She laughed. 'Really?' The machine shrugged and let go of her hand. 'Oh, no. It's just something we tell ourselves.
Iain Banks
Image
I held my crotch, closed my eyes and repeated my secret catechism.
Iain Banks
Image
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
Image
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.
Iain Banks
Image
Science fiction has its own history, its own legacy of what's been done, what's been superseded, what's so much part of the furniture it's practically part of the fabric now, what's become no more than a joke...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.
Iain Banks
Image
I wouldn't like to be a character in one of my books!
Iain Banks
Image
One should never mistake pattern for meaning.
Iain Banks
Image
Science fiction is trying to find alternative ways of looking at realities.
Iain Banks
Image
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.
Iain Banks
Image
A guilty system recognizes no innocents.
Iain Banks
Image
Don't you have a religion? Dorolow asked Horza. Yes, he replied, not taking his eyes away from the screen on the wall above the end of the main mess-room table. My survival.
Iain Banks
Image
I think the future stopped looking American when you think back to Blade Runner and Neuromancer, when it started to look more Japanese.
Iain Banks
Image
You have to have something worth saying and then the ability to say it- writing's a double skill, really.
Iain Banks
Image
If this goes badly and I make a crater, I want it named after me!
Iain Banks
Image
I still have some of my old University essays, and I do still have my drawing book from primary year seven.
Iain Banks
Image
I think we need politicians we need people who want to serve.
Iain Banks
Image
Torture is such a slippery slope as soon as you allow a society or any legal system to do that, almost instantly you get a situation where people are being tortured for very trivial reasons.
Iain Banks