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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
Humans
Skill
Achievement
Skills
Intellectual
Exercise
Feeling
Feelings
Human

More quotes by Iain Banks

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I just come up with the stories and write them as well as I can. There's not really a great deal of strokey-beard thinking going on.
Iain Banks
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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
Iain Banks
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A guilty system recognizes no innocents.
Iain Banks
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The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.
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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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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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 have to have something worth saying and then the ability to say it- writing's a double skill, really.
Iain Banks
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I think we need politicians we need people who want to serve.
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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In so much of politics you're not allowed to disagree with what's been agreed.
Iain Banks
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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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If this goes badly and I make a crater, I want it named after me!
Iain Banks
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Science fiction is trying to find alternative ways of looking at realities.
Iain Banks
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Smell is a very animal thing, almost reptilian, where the more cerebral things like reading less so.
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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My gratitude extends beyond the limits of my capacity to express it.
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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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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The History Of The Universe In Three Words CHAPTER ONE Bang! CHAPTER TWO sssss CHAPTER THREE crunch. THE END
Iain Banks