Quote

Science fiction has its own history, its own legacy of what's been done, what's been superseded, what's so much part of the furniture it's practically part of the fabric now, what's become no more than a joke...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

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
Much
Fiction
Legacy
Comically
History
Joke
Superseded
Science
Foolish
Practically
Become
Basic
Furniture
Part
Fail
Arrogant
Wells
Jokes
Fabric
Well
Research
Plain
Done
Failing
Ignore

More quotes by Iain Banks

Image
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
Image
My gratitude extends beyond the limits of my capacity to express it.
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
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
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
What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead?
Iain Banks
Image
Even galaxy-spanning anarchist utopias of stupefying full-spectrum civilisational power have turf wars within their unacknowledged militaries.
Iain Banks
Image
I wouldn't like to be a character in one of my books!
Iain Banks
Image
Intellectual achievement. The exercise of skill. Human feeling.
Iain Banks
Image
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
Image
One should never mistake pattern for meaning.
Iain Banks
Image
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
Image
I think the future stopped looking American when you think back to Blade Runner and Neuromancer, when it started to look more Japanese.
Iain Banks
Image
Smell is a very animal thing, almost reptilian, where the more cerebral things like reading less so.
Iain Banks
Image
It's a library, only the stupid or the evil are afraid of those
Iain Banks
Image
I am not being obtuse. You are being paranoid.
Iain Banks
Image
You need to read more science fiction. Nobody who reads science fiction comes out with this crap about the end of history
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
The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.
Iain Banks
Image
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