Iain m. banks Quotes - QuotesSweet | quotesweet.com

Author: Iain M. Banks
Quotes of Author: Iain M. Banks

Iain M. Banks _ The Algebraist
You judged your own attractiveness - physically, psychologically and in terms of status - then you knew your level and could either raise or lower your sights accordingly, risking rejection but with the possibility of advancement, or settling for a more reliably stable life but never knowing what you might have achieved.
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Iain M. Banks _ The Player of Games
The empire survives, the barbarians survive, but the empire is no more and the barbarians are nowhere to be found.
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Iain M. Banks _ Surface Detail
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.
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Iain M. Banks _ The Hydrogen Sonata
Always try to avoid setting up future opportunities for kicking yourself.
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Iain M. Banks _ Matter
He also believed that it was a deliberate scheme of their mentors to encourage those who were in power, or who would one day assume power, to witness the wonders that they were not being shown, so that they would never be tempted to get above themselves, so that they would always know that no matter how magnificent they appeared to themselves or those around them and regardless of what they achieved, it was all within the context of this greater, more powerful, sophisticated and ultimately far superior reality.
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Iain M. Banks _ Consider Phlebas
Contest is formative; battle is a testing, war a part of life and the evolutionary process. In its extremity, we find ourselves.""Usually in the shit.
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Iain M. Banks _ Surface Detail
Even the most urbanely sophisticated, scrupulously empathic and excruciatingly polite civilisation, it had been suggested, was just a hegswarm with a sense of proportion.
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Iain M. Banks _ The State of the Art
I'm the smartest thing for a hundred light years radius, and by a factor of about a million ...... but even I can't predict where a snooker ball's going to end up after more than six collisions.
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Iain M. Banks _ The Player of Games
Our Azadian friends are always rather nonplussed by our lack of a flag or a symbol, and the Culture rep here-you'll meet him tonight if he remembers to turn up-thought it was a pity there was no Culture anthem for bands to play when our people come here, so he whistled them the first song that came into his head, and they've been playing that at receptions and ceremonies for the last eight years." "I thought I recognized one of the tunes they played," Gurgeh admitted. The drone pushed his arms up and made some more adjustments. "Yes, but the first song that came into the guy's head was 'Lick Me Out'; have you heard the lyrics?" "Ah." Gurgeh grinned. "That song. Yes, that could be awkward." "Damn right. If they find out they'll probably declare war. Usual Contact snafu.
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Iain M. Banks _ Matter
Might, fury, decisive force, the willingness to smite; how her father had loved such terms and ideas, and how shallow they began to look when you saw them played out time and time again over the centuries and millennia by a thousand different species. This is how power works, how force and authority assert themselves, this is how people are persuaded to behave in ways that are not objectively in their best interests, this is the kind of thing you need to make people believe in, this is how the unequal distribution of scarcity comes into play, at this moment and this, and this...
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Iain M. Banks _ Surface Detail
you needed ear defenders, and the swirling slipstream caused total havoc to any hairstyle worth the name.
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Iain M. Banks _ Surface Detail
The world was on fire; walls of smoke filled the sky, making a night lit up like hell, flames leaping from a hundred different places, trees and outbuildings all on fire or silhouetted against the fires beyond.
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