Iain Banks: Trending quotes (page 7)

“Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and wilfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 1 “The Light of Ancient Mistakes” (p. 25)

Lie , Appearance , Future

“Sorrow be damned and all your plans. Fuck the faithful, fuck the committed, the dedicated, the true believers; fuck all the sure and certain people prepared to maim and kill whoever got in their way; fuck every cause that ended in murder and a child screaming.”

Iain Banks

Against a Dark Background ISBN 1-85723-179-1 (UK) ISBN 0-553-29225-0 (US).
Non-Culture Novels, Against a Dark Background (1993)

Way , Faith , People

“See if you can hold off this pack of blood-sucking scavengers. Here’s my duelling sword.”

Iain Banks Culture series

The King handed me his own sword! “You have full permission to use it on anyone who looks remotely like a physician.”
Source: Culture series, Inversions (1998), Chapter 3 (p. 47)

“One of the advantages of having laws is the pleasure one may take in breaking them. We here are not children, Mr. Gurgeh.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Hamin waved the pipestem round the tables of people. “Rules and laws exist only because we take pleasure in doing what they forbid, but as long as most of the people obey such proscriptions most of the time, they have done their job; blind obedience would imply we are—ha!”—Hamin chuckled and pointed at the drone with the pipe—“no more than robots!”
Source: Culture series, The Player of Games (1988), Chapter 2 (p. 279).

Pleasure , Children , Law

“Of course they aren’t ready for it, of course we’ll spoil the place. Are they any more ready for World War Three? You seriously think we could mess the place up more than they’re doing at the moment? When they’re not actually out slaughtering each other they’re inventing ingenious new ways to massacre each other more efficiently in the future, and when they’re not doing that they’re committing speciescide, from the Amazon to Borneo… or filling the seas with shit, or the air, or the land. They could hardly make a better job of vandalizing their own planet if we gave them lessons.”

Iain Banks

“State of the Art” (p. 84)
Short fiction, The State of the Art (1991)

War , Future , Thinking , Way

“Nothing is sacred to you, Mr. Munro. You base your beliefs on the products of human thought, so it could hardly be otherwise. You might believe in certain things, but you do not have faith. That comes with submission to the force of divine revelation.”

Iain Banks

“So, because I don’t have what I think of as superstitions, because I believe we just happen to exist, and believe in... science, evolution, whatever; I’m not as... worthy as somebody who has faith in an ancient book and a cruel, desert God?”
Source: Short fiction, The State of the Art (1991) “Piece” (p. 73)

Faith

“Elated? Pleased?”

Iain Banks Culture series

“Those are the closest words. There is an undeniable elation in causing mayhem, in bringing about such massive destruction. As for feeling pleased, I felt pleasure that some of those who died did so because they were stupid enough to believe in gods or afterlives that do not exist, even though I felt a terrible sorrow for them as they died in their ignorance and thanks to their folly.”
Source: Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 13 “Some Ways of Dying” (p. 315)

“It must be a burden, not even being able to say you were just obeying orders.”

Iain Banks Culture series

“Well, that is always a lie, or a sign you are fighting for an unworthy cause, or still have a very long way to develop civilisationally.”
Source: Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 13 “Some Ways of Dying” (p. 312)

“You serious?”

Iain Banks Culture series

“I’m always serious, never more so than when I’m being flippant.”
Source: Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 11 “Absence of Gravitas” (p. 231)

“Oh. I didn’t realise.”

Iain Banks Culture series

“Then you’re simply ignorant rather than malevolent. Congratulations.”
Source: Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 11 “Absence of Gravitas” (p. 231)

“Believe me; democracy in action can be an unpretty sight.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 8c “The Memory of Running” (p. 198)

Democracy

“What, now?”

Iain Banks Culture series

“Soon equates to good, later to worse, Uagen Zlepe, scholar. Therefore, immediacy.”
Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 8b “Dirigible” (p. 176)

“I’m supposed to be at this sort of thing but even I find it pretty damn tedious at times. Still, receptions and parties are pan-cultural, so we’re told. I’ve never been sure whether to be reassured or appalled by that.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 8a “The Retreat at Cadracet” (p. 154)

Time

“Apparently I am what is known as an Unreliable Narrator, though of course if you believe everything you're told you deserve whatever you get.”

Iain Banks book Transition

First sentence of the novel
Source: Non-Culture Novels, Transition (2009)

“But are we within likelihood? Are we even still within the realm of anything other than paranoid lunacy?”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Matter (2008), Chapter 19 “Dispatches” (p. 357)

“Even galaxy-spanning anarchist utopias of stupefying full-spectrum civilisational power have turf wars within their unacknowledged militaries.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Matter (2008), Chapter 18 “The Current Emergency” (p. 333)

War

“Fear lasted a week, anger a year and resentment a lifetime.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Matter (2008), Chapter 17 “Departures” (p. 305)
Context: On this purely practical issue he judged massacre wasteful and even contrary as a method of control.

Anger , Fear

“Ultimately the galaxy, indeed the sum of the universe in its entirety, was mostly nothing; average it all out and it made a pretty good vacuum. But within the foci of matter there were the systems, the stars and planets and habitats—what a cornucopia of life was there!”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Matter (2008), Chapter 10 “A Certain Lack” (p. 167)

Star , Universe , Life

“A good death. Well, he thought, given that you had to die, why want a bad one?”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Matter (2008), Chapter 27 “The Core” (p. 551)

Death