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Intellectual achievement. The exercise of skill. Human feeling.

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
Achievement
Skills
Intellectual
Exercise
Feeling
Feelings
Human
Humans
Skill

More quotes by Iain Banks

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Dead Air' is full of rants it's a rant-based book. Yes, it's self-indulgence. I plead guilty mea culpa.
Iain Banks
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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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I'm from out of town, he said breezily. This was true. He'd never been within a hundred light-years of the place.
Iain Banks
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In so much of politics you're not allowed to disagree with what's been agreed.
Iain Banks
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If this goes badly and I make a crater, I want it named after me!
Iain Banks
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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.
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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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's an old Sysan saying that the soup of life is salty enough without adding tears to it.
Iain Banks
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Mr Blawke always reminded me of a heron I'm not sure why. Something to do with a sense of rapacious stillness, perhaps, and also the aura of one who knows time is on his side.
Iain Banks
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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?
Iain Banks
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Well, he sighed to no one in particular, and looked up into yet another alien sky. Here we are again.
Iain Banks
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You're a wicked man. Thank you. It's taken years of diligent practice.
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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...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
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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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-Then what, Lededje asked, trying to keep her voice cold and not get caught up in the avatar´s obvious enthusiasm, is making you smile about a disaster? -Well, first, I didn´t cause it! Nothing to do with me, hands clean. Always a bonus.
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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I'm a devoted husband. That must strike you as totally deviant.
Iain Banks
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As a writer, you get to play, you get alter time, you get to come up with the smart lines and the clever comebacks you wish you'd thought of.
Iain Banks