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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

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
Read
History
Comes
Science
Ends
Reads
Need
Crap
Needs
Nobody
Fiction

More quotes by Iain Banks

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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
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There has seldom if ever a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this simple fact there is never a scarcity of idiots.
Iain Banks
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Something in your voice tells me we approach the question of remuneration.
Iain Banks
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Science fiction has its own history, its own legacy of what's been done, what's been superseded, what's so much part of the furniture it's practically part of the fabric now, what's become no more than a joke...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.
Iain Banks
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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
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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.
Iain Banks
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Hersesy is denying the word of God, and the word of God is much more reliably expressed in the natural world as it’s revealed through reason and science than in what I have heard described wonderfully as “the giant book of Jewish fairy stories.
Iain Banks
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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
Iain Banks
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Escape is a consumer goods like another
Iain Banks
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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.
Iain Banks
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One should never mistake pattern for meaning.
Iain Banks
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A guilty system recognizes no innocents.
Iain Banks
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There are no gods, we are told, so I must make my own salvation.
Iain Banks
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I am not being obtuse. You are being paranoid.
Iain Banks
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There's an old Sysan saying that the soup of life is salty enough without adding tears to it.
Iain Banks
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What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead?
Iain Banks
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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.
Iain Banks
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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.
Iain Banks
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Science fiction is trying to find alternative ways of looking at realities.
Iain Banks
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I'm an only child so am happy with my own company and I don't really get lonely.
Iain Banks