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I wouldn't like to be a character in one of my books!

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
Wouldn
Books
Character
Book
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More quotes by 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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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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What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead?
Iain Banks
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I held my crotch, closed my eyes and repeated my secret catechism.
Iain Banks
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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
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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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Even galaxy-spanning anarchist utopias of stupefying full-spectrum civilisational power have turf wars within their unacknowledged militaries.
Iain Banks
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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
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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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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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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 remember being shocked when I discovered some of my school pals didn't have books in their homes. I thought it was like not having oxygen, or hot water.
Iain Banks
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I'm saying with very few exceptions nothing lasts forever, and among those exceptions, no work or thought of man is numbered.
Iain Banks
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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.
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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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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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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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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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.
Iain Banks