“Everything about us, everything around us, everything we know and can know of is composed ultimately of patterns of nothing; that’s the bottom line, the final truth. So where we find we have any control over those patterns, why not make the most elegant ones, the most enjoyable and good ones, in our own terms? Yes, we’re hedonists, Mr. Bora Horza Gobuchul. We seek pleasure and have fashioned ourselves so that we can take more of it; admitted. We are what we are. But what about you? What does that make you?”
“Everything about us, everything around us, everything we know and can know of is composed ultimately of patterns of nothing; that’s the bottom line, the final truth. So where we find we have any control over those patterns, why not make the most elegant ones, the most enjoyable and good ones, in our own terms? Yes, we’re hedonists, Mr. Bora Horza Gobuchul. We seek pleasure and have fashioned ourselves so that we can take more of it; admitted. We are what we are. But what about you? What does that make you?”
Iain Banks
“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“My point has always been that, ever since the Industrial Revolution, science fiction has been the most important genre there is.”
Iain Banks“It's like a sealed, forgotten chamber in me; I shan't feel complete until I've discovered its entrance.' 'Sounds like a tomb. Aren't you afraid of what you'll find in there?' 'It's a library; only the stupid and the evil are afraid of those.”
Iain Banks“Let's be clear: unless I have profoundly misunderstood its position, I pretty much despise American Libertarianism. Have these people seriously looked at the problems of the world and thought, 'Hmm, what we need here is a bit more selfishness'? . . . I beg to differ.”
Iain Banks“Half the fun of writing a novel is finding out from other people later on what you actually meant.”
Iain Banks“I don't think you really belong here, Aviger." Xoxarle nodded wisely, slowly.Aviger shrugged, and did not raise his eyes. "I don't think any of us do.""The brave belong where they decide." Some harshness entered the Idiran's voice.”
Iain Banks“To want more was not just childish, but cowardly, and somehow constpatory too. Death was change; it led to new chances, new vacancies, new niches and opportunities; it was not all loss.”
Iain Banks“it is an ocean of burning oil I am cast adrift upon, no sea’s repose; I pass from waking agonies… to the semiconscious trance of torment in which the smaller, earlier, deeper rings of the brain know only that the nerves scream, the body aches, and there is no one to turn crying to for comfort.”
Iain Banks“You need to read more science fiction. Nobody who reads science fiction comes out with this crap about the end of history”
Iain BanksAll in One Creative & Marketing Platform to tell stories at scale
