Iain M. Banks Quotes

The battle-memes of the invading alien consciousness aided by the thought processes and shared knowledge of the by now obviously completely overwhelmed ship. With

There came a point when if a conspiracy was that powerful and subtle it became pointless to worry about it.

Silence)This from that very pit of night, naked in the wasteland, the ice-wind moaning his only covering, alone in the freezing darkness under a sky of chill obsidian:)

All you ever were was a little bit of the universe, thinking to itself. Very specific; this bit, here, right now. All the rest was fantasy. Nothing was ever identical to anything else because it didn’...

Almost every developing species had a creation myth buried somewhere in its past, even if by the time they’d become space-faring it was no more than a quaint and dusty irrelevance (though, granted, so...

Ancient, vicious, discredited ideas backed with adolescent war mania. It’s

Because I do enjoy winning, because I do have something nobody can copy, something nobody else can have; I’m me; I’m one of the best.

But I don’t know what the right thing to do is; I sometimes think I know too much, I’ve studied too much, learned too much, remembered too much. It all seems to average out, somehow; like dust that se...

But just because something does not have an ending doesn't mean it doesn't have a conclusion.

By being unknowable, by resulting from events which, at the sub-atomic level, cannot be fully predicted, the future remains malleable, and retains the possibility of change, the hope of coming to prev...

Division was the only order.

He dallied a moment, soaking up the fresh, clean smell of the wood—he remembered a time when they’d taken a hunting cabin in the Loustrian Hills, just the two of them. The axe that came with the cabin...

He walked for days, stopping at bars and restaurants whenever he felt thirsty, hungry or tired; mostly they were automatic and he was served by little floating trays, though a few were staffed by real...

He wasn’t sure himself why he was pulling his punches in this way, but somehow it seemed important not to let Contact know everything, to keep something back. It was a small victory against them a lit...

In the dying days of the Gzilt civilisation, before its long-prepared-for elevation to something better and the celebrations to mark this momentous but joyful occasion, one of its last surviving ships...

My gratitude extends beyond the limits of my capacity to express it,

Once one survives the trough that comes with the understanding that people are going to go on being stupid and cruel to each other no matter what, probably for ever – if one survives; many people choo...

Sometimes heroics revolted him; they seemed like an insult to the soldier who weighed the risks of the situation and made calm, cunning decisions based on experience and imagination, the sort of unsho...

Subtlety, which was heading back for the

The truth is not always useful, not always good. It’s like putting your faith in water. Yes, we need the rain, but too much can sweep you away in a flood and drown you. Like all great natural, element...