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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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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
Ability
Writing
Something
Really
Double
Skill
Skills
Worth
Saying

More quotes by 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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Science fiction has its own history, its own legacy of what's been done, what's been superseded, what's so much part of the furniture it's practically part of the fabric now, what's become no more than a joke...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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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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I'm an only child so am happy with my own company and I don't really get lonely.
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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I'm a devoted husband. That must strike you as totally deviant.
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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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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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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The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.
Iain Banks
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Intellectual achievement. The exercise of skill. Human feeling.
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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The History Of The Universe In Three Words CHAPTER ONE Bang! CHAPTER TWO sssss CHAPTER THREE crunch. THE END
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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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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Soon equates to good, later to worse, Uagen Zlepe, scholar. Therefore, immediacy.
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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A guilty system recognizes no innocents.
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