But did that mean that the urge to live was the result of some sort of illusion? Was the reality, in fact, that nothing mattered and people were fool… - Iain Banks

She took a deep breath. Suddenly, she felt quite entirely sober. “Is this as important as I think it is?”
“Almost certainly much more so.”
“Oh,” she said, “fuck.”

"I just took [my cancer diagnosis] as bad luck, basically. It did strike me almost immediately, my atheist sort of thing kicked in and I thought "ha, if I was a God-botherer, I'd be thinking, why me God? What have I done to deserve this?" and I thought at least I'm free of that, at least I can simply treat it as bad luck and get on with it."

He was one of those people who got to the top of an organisation through luck, connections, the indulgence of superiors and that sort of carelessness towards others that the easily impressed termed ruthlessness and those of a less gullible nature called sociopathy. But sometimes, just through his sheer unthinking brusqueness and inability to think through the consequences of a remark, he said what everybody else was only thinking. A comic poet working in obscene doggerel.