Iain Banks Quotes

He knew in his heart that there was a relief in not being listened to, sometimes. Power meant responsibility. Advice unacted upon almost always might have been right, and in the working out of whatever plan was followed, there was anyway always blood; better it was on their hands. The good soldier did as he was told, and if he had any sense at all volunteered for nothing, especially promotion.

The bomb lives only as it is falling.

The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.

one thing that empires are not about is the efficient use of resources and the spread of happiness; both are typically accomplished despite the economic short-circuiting — corruption and favoritism, mostly — endemic to the system.

The source of my name," the vehicle had replied, "The Hundredth Idiot, is a quotation: 'One hundred idiots make idiotic plans and carry them out. All but one justly fail. The hundredth idiot, whose plan succeeded through pure luck, is immediately convinced he's a genius.' It is an old proverb.

People often behave badly when they are trying to prove a point.

See if you can hold off this pack of blood-sucking scavengers. Here's my duelling sword." The King handed me his own sword! "You have full permission to use it on anyone who looks remotely like a physician.

Ferbin’s father had had the same robustly pragmatic view of religion as he’d had of everything else. In his opinion, only the very poor and downtrodden really needed religion, to make their laborious lives more bearable. People craved self-importance; they longed to be told they mattered as individuals, not just as part of a mass of people or some historical process. They needed the reassurance that while their life might be hard, bitter and thankless, some reward would be theirs after death. Happily for the governing class, a well-formed faith also kept people from seeking their recompense in the here and now, through riot, insurrection or revolution.
A temple was worth a dozen barracks; a militia man carrying a gun could control a small unarmed crowd only for as long as he was present; however, a single priest could put a policeman inside the head of every one of their flock, for ever.

He suspected the troops felt closer to somebody who spoke a different language but asked them questions than they did to somebody who shared their language and only ever used it to give orders.

The set-up assumes that the game and life are the same thing, and such is the pervasive nature of the idea of the game within the society that just by believing that, they make it so.

How are you?"
"I am here."
"Apart from that," she said levelly.
"There is no apart from that.

I imagine my sorrow for your loss will prove containable.

You're a wicked man."
"Thank you. It's taken years of diligent practice.

They had faith and so would do things that were plainly not in their own immediate (or, often, long-term) best interests, because they just believed what they had been told.

~ Want to know one ugly thought?
~ Are there not enough in the world already?
~ Assuredly. But sometimes ugly thoughts can be prevented from becoming ugly deeds by exposing them.
~ If you say so.
~ One should always ask who has most to gain.