Quotes from work
Culture series

Iain Banks

The Culture series is a science fiction series written by Scottish author Iain M. Banks. The stories centre on the Culture, a utopian, post-scarcity space society of humanoids, aliens, and very advanced artificial intelligences living in socialist habitats spread across the Milky Way galaxy. The main theme of the novels is the dilemmas that an idealistic hyperpower faces in dealing with civilizations that do not share its ideals, and whose behaviour it sometimes finds repulsive. In some of the stories action takes place mainly in non-Culture environments, and the leading characters are often on the fringes of the Culture, sometimes acting as agents of Culture in its plans to civilize the galaxy.

“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 Culture series

Source: Culture series, Excession (1996), Chapter 8 “Killing Time” section VII (p. 269).

“Just as I need never wonder what it is like to die, so I need never wonder what it is like to kill, Ziller, because I have done it, and it is a wasteful, graceless, worthless and hateful thing to have to do.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 13 “Some Ways of Dying” (p. 317)

“Did you know that true subjective time is measured in the minimum duration of demonstrably separate thoughts?”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 13 “Some Ways of Dying” (p. 316)

“But even if all the other stuff seems a bit esoteric, just think of all those other avatars at all those other gatherings, concerts, dances, ceremonies, parties and meals; think of all that talk, all those ideas, all that sparkle and wit!”

Iain Banks Culture series

“Think of all that bullshit, the nonsense and non-sequiturs, the self-aggrandisement and self-deception, the boring stupid nonsense, the pathetic attempts to impress or ingratiate, the slow-wittedness, the incomprehension and the incomprehensible, the gland-addled meanderings and general suffocating dullness.”
Source: Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 11 “Absence of Gravitas” (p. 245)

“Are you really as ignorant as you appear, Trelsen, or is this some sort of bizarre act, perhaps even meant to be amusing?”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 11 “Absence of Gravitas” (p. 231)

“They spend time. That’s just it. They spend time traveling. The time weighs heavily on them because they lack any context, any valid framework for their lives. They persist in hoping that something they think they’ll find in the place they’re heading for will somehow provide them with a fulfilment they feel certain they deserve and yet have never come close to experiencing.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Ziller frowned and tapped at his pipe bowl. “Some travel forever in hope and are serially disappointed. Others, slightly less self-deceiving, come to accept that the process of travelling itself offers, if not fulfilment, then relief from the feeling that they should be feeling fulfilled.”
Source: Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 5 “A Very Attractive System” (p. 113)

“Is your own existence so replete with equanimity you find no outlet for worry except on behalf of others?”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 3 “Infra Dawn” (p. 67)

“The background to the war, my studious Homomdan pal, is three thousand years of ruthless oppression, cultural imperialism, economic exploitation, systematic torture, sexual tyranny and the cult of greed ingrained almost to the point of genetic inheritability.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 3 “Infra Dawn” (p. 66)

“We always want more, he thought, we always take our past successes for granted and assume they point the way to future triumphs. But the universe does not have our own best interests at heart, and to assume for a moment that it does, ever did or ever might is to make the most calamitous and hubristic of mistakes.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 2 “Winter Storm” (p. 36)

“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)

“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).

“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)

“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)