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Book: Look to Windward
Quotes of Book: Look to Windward

Iain M. Banks _ Look to Windward
Even once the Culture as an entity had been established and the use of conventional currency had come to be seen as an archaic hindrance to development rather than its moderating enabler, appreciable amounts of energy and time - both biological and machine - had been spent perfecting the various methods by which the human sensory apparatus could be convinced that it was experiencing something that was not really happening.
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Iain M. Banks _ Look to Windward
The old male drew himself up as though getting ready to go. "I hate romantics, Quilan. They do not really know themselves, but what is worse they do not really want to know themselves-or, ultimately, anybody else-because they think that will take the mystery out of life. They are fools. You are a fool. Probably your wife was a fool, too." He paused. "Probably you were both romantic fools," he said. "Fools who were doomed to a life of disillusionment and bitterness when you discovered that your precious romanticism faded away after the first few years of marriage and you were left to confront not just your own inadequacies but those of your mate. You were lucky she died. She was unlucky it was her and not you.
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Iain M. Banks _ Look to Windward
From up here they could see for hundreds of kilometres across Frettle Plate. The system's star, Lacelere, was still rising and slowly yellowing to full brightness, shining through the continents of air to anti-spinward, its radiance obliterating any detail on the lands still in shade.
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Iain M. Banks _ Look to Windward
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 was blunt; he'd sharpened it with a stone, hoping to impress her with his handiness, but then when he'd come to swing it at the first piece of wood the head had sailed off and disappeared into the trees. He could still exactly recall her laughter, and then, when he must have looked hurt, her kiss.They had slept under furs on a platform of moss. He remembered one cold morning when the fire had gone out overnight and it was freezingly cold in the cabin and they had coupled, him straddling her, his teeth nipped gently in the fur at the nape of her neck, moving slowly over and in her, watching the smoke of her breath as it billowed in the sunlight and rolled out across the room to the window, where it froze in curving, recursive motifs; a coalescence of pattern out of chaos.
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Iain M. Banks _ Look to Windward
They spend time. That's just it. They spend time traveling. The time weighs heavily on them because they lack any context, any valid framework for their lives. They persist in hoping that something they think they'll find in the place they're heading for will somehow provide them with a fulfilment they feel certain they deserve and yet have never come close to experiencing.
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Iain M. Banks _ Look to Windward
The smell was that of a sewer under an abattoir.
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Iain M. Banks _ Look to Windward
{T}here can be a form of vanity in grief that is indulged rather than suffered.
book-quote self-pity wallowing
Iain M. Banks _ Look to Windward
We always want more, he thought, we always take our past successes for granted and assume they but point the way to future triumphs. But the universe does not have our own best interests at heart, and to assume for a moment that it does, ever did or ever might is to make the most calamitous and hubristic of mistakes.
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Iain M. Banks _ Look to Windward
In the old days people died and that was that; you might hope to see them in heaven, but once they were dead they were dead. It was simple, it was definite. Now … " He shook his head angrily. "Now people die but their Soulkeeper can revive them, or take them to a heaven we know exists, without any need for faith. We have clones, we have regrown bodies-most of me is regrown; I wake up sometimes and think, Am I still me? I know you're supposed to be your brain, your wits, your thoughts, but I don't believe it is that simple.
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Iain M. Banks _ Look to Windward
I have seen people who find that grief gives them something they never had before, and no matter how terrible and real their loss they choose to hug that awfulness to them rather than push it away.
book-quote self-pity wallowing
Iain M. Banks _ Look to Windward
Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.
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Iain M. Banks _ Look to Windward
The point, of course, is that the people who spent days and sweated buckets could also have taken an aircraft to the summit if all they'd wanted was to absorb the view. It is the struggle that they crave. The sense of achievement is produced by the route to and from the peak, not by the peak itself. It is just the fold between the pages." The avatar hesitated. It put its head a little to one side and narrowed its eyes. "How far do I have to take this analogy, Cr. Ziller?".
book-quote rock-climbing