Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Really
Write
Thinking
Stories
Wells
Come
Well
Great
Beard
Writing
Deal
Going
Deals

More quotes by Iain Banks

Image
There are no gods, we are told, so I must make my own salvation.
Iain Banks
Image
Smell is a very animal thing, almost reptilian, where the more cerebral things like reading less so.
Iain Banks
Image
I still have some of my old University essays, and I do still have my drawing book from primary year seven.
Iain Banks
Image
Even galaxy-spanning anarchist utopias of stupefying full-spectrum civilisational power have turf wars within their unacknowledged militaries.
Iain Banks
Image
A lot of what the 'Culture' is about is a reaction to all the science fiction I was reading in my very early teens.
Iain Banks
Image
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
Image
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
Image
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said. She laughed. 'Really?' The machine shrugged and let go of her hand. 'Oh, no. It's just something we tell ourselves.
Iain Banks
Image
Escape is a consumer goods like another
Iain Banks
Image
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
Image
...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
Image
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
Image
He knew all the answers. Everybody did. Everybody knew everything and everybody knew all the answers. It was just that the enemy seemed to know better ones.
Iain Banks
Image
I am not being obtuse. You are being paranoid.
Iain Banks
Image
I'm a devoted husband. That must strike you as totally deviant.
Iain Banks
Image
I deliberately keep myself apart from a lot of stuff I don't Tweet, I don't do Facebook, I don't blog, and that's largely because I spend my working life staring at a screen and hitting a keyboard, I am trying to cut down on that, not increase it.
Iain Banks
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
If this goes badly and I make a crater, I want it named after me!
Iain Banks