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I am, as I have always been, of the opinion that while the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.

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
Normal
Opinion
Moral
Must
Niceties
Always
Constraints
Guides
Morality
Masters

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I am not being obtuse. You are being paranoid.
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What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead?
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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.
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Soon equates to good, later to worse, Uagen Zlepe, scholar. Therefore, immediacy.
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Smell is a very animal thing, almost reptilian, where the more cerebral things like reading less so.
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My gratitude extends beyond the limits of my capacity to express it.
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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.
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As a writer, you get to play, you get alter time, you get to come up with the smart lines and the clever comebacks you wish you'd thought of.
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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.
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In so much of politics you're not allowed to disagree with what's been agreed.
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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.
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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.
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Even galaxy-spanning anarchist utopias of stupefying full-spectrum civilisational power have turf wars within their unacknowledged militaries.
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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.
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I think we need politicians we need people who want to serve.
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It's a library, only the stupid or the evil are afraid of those
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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?
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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
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There are no gods, we are told, so I must make my own salvation.
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Something in your voice tells me we approach the question of remuneration.
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