Iain Banks

"“Anyway, it was all terribly well organised. Done with military precision.” He barked a laugh. “Better than that, actually; didn’t miss and hit their own people.”"

"“So why are we bothering?” “Just in case.” “Just in case what?” “Just in case it turns out to be something we should have bothered about. Always try to avoid setting up future opportunities for kicking yourself.”"

"“So,” she said, “living all this time has been to no purpose, basically.” “True, but that hardly distinguishes me from anybody else, does it?” “But shouldn’t it, or there’s no point?” “No. Living either never has any point, or is always its own point; being a naturally cheery soul, I lean toward the latter. However, just having done more of it than another person doesn’t really make much difference.”"

"“Well,” the voice said, seemingly oblivious, “one thing that does happen when you live a long time is that you start to realise the essential futility of so much that we do, especially when you see the same patterns of behaviour repeated by succeeding generations and across different species. You see the same dreams, the same hopes, the same ambitions and aspirations, reiterated, and the same actions, the same courses and tactics and strategies, regurgitated, to the same predictable and often lamentable effects, and you start to think, So? Does it really matter? Why really are you bothering with all this? Are these not just further doomed, asinine ways of attempting to fill your vacuous, pointless existence, wedged slivered as it is between the boundless infinitudes of dark oblivion bookending its utter triviality?” “Uh-huh,” she said. “Is this a rhetorical question?” “It is a mistaken question. Meaning is everywhere. There is always meaning. Or at least all things show a disturbing tendency to have meaning ascribed to them when intelligent creatures are present. It’s just that there’s no final Meaning, with a capital M. Though the illusion that there might be is comforting for a certain class of mind.”"

"“I take comfort in the loyalty and faith you display towards your crew, Captain.” “My crew are loyal to me, Colonel; I am only loyal to the regiment and Gzilt. Also, faith is belief without reason; we operate on reason and nothing but. I have zero faith in my crew, just absolute confidence.”"

"“The person concerned sounds – to be polite – eccentric.” “That would be polite to the point of over-generosity,” Tefwe said. “Awkward, tetchy and unreasonable might be closer to the truth.”"

"“I do believe my sarcasm-meter just twitched.” “A false positive, I fear. I was being entirely sincere.”"

"“That seems obsessive.” “Meticulous care can seem so to those unwilling to recognise it for its true worth.”"

"Ignorance can be interesting. ∞ Also fatal."

"Obsession is just what those too timorous to follow an idea through to its logical conclusion call determination."

"Trust me; it is rarely an encouraging sign when the more apparel is removed, the less attractive a prospective sexual partner becomes."

"I have lived ten thousand years; I am used to it. Lovers dying, civilisations dying…one develops a certain god-like indifference to it all, intellectually."

"Ah, dear. How fine the line is between acceptably defiant bravado and hopelessly delusional boasting."

"Promises take many shapes, and the more…momentous they are, the more they might look like threats. All great promises are threats, I suppose, to the way things have been until that point, to some aspect of our lives, and we all suddenly become conservative, even though we want and need what the promise holds, and look forward to the promised change at the same time."

"We all think we’re special, and in a way we are, but, at the same time, that feeling of being special is one of the things that’s common to us all, that unites us and makes us the same as each other. And when that feeling of…specialness is questioned, we feel threatened, naturally."

"The news channels are spasming, or frothing, or whatever it is they do."

"“I have buffed and polished my medals for decades of steady, dedicated watchfulness,” the marshal continued, clasping her hands behind her head as she leaned back and relaxed, legs crossed, “counted and re-counted my medals for outstanding work in simulations and exercises, carefully rearranged my medals for heroic bravery under virtual fire, and even found room for my many, many medals for exemplary valour in the face of fellow officers coveting the same promotions as I.”"

"“Have you always been so suspicious, Banstegeyn?” He looked at her, unsmiling. “No, I stumbled into a position of great power quite by accident.”"

"One should never regret one’s excesses, only one’s failures of nerve."

"~My full name is the Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Mere Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath. Cool, eh?"

"The truth is the truth. You tell it even when it hurts or it loses value even when it doesn’t."

"‘Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different reasons than I’d disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. That’s my score to date. Three. I haven’t killed anybody for years, and don’t intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through.’"

"“No, Geis, it doesn’t wear off. Like certain exotic diseases, and unlike love, synchroneurobonding is for life.” Geis lowered his eyes. “You weren’t always so cynical about love.” “As they say; ignorance pays.”"

"“Put plainly, I am not at liberty to divulge that information. There, it is said. Let us quickly move on from this unfortunate quantum of dissonance to the ground-state of accord which I trust will inform our future relationship.” “So you’re not going to tell me.” Sharrow nodded. “My dear lady,” the machine said, continuing to trundle after her. “Without saying so in so many words...correct.”"

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

"Geis is a pain, Sharrow; the guy has a kind of charming facade but basically he’s a social inadequate whose real place in life is out mugging pensioners and cheating and beating on his girlfriends, and if he had three more names and been raised in a rookery in the The Meg rather than the nursery at house Tzant, that’s exactly what he would be doing. Instead he jumps out of the commercial equivalent of dark allies, strips companies and fucks their employees. He’s got no idea how real people work so he plays the market instead; he’s a rich kid who thinks the banks and courts and Corps are his construction set and he doesn’t want anybody else to play. He wants you the way he wants a sexy company, as a bauble, a scalp, something to display. Never get beholden to people like that, they’ll piss on you and then charge irrigation fees."

"“Anyway,” she said. “I’m sorry.” “Indeed. I can see contrition oozing from your every pore.”"

"Perhaps it was simply bad luck, but despite the fact the sheer capability of the Guns ought to have ensured their owner could effectively become ruler of the entire system, the weapons had invariably been the downfall of whoever had come into possession of them."

"“Aah...Yes, and how does madam wish to pay?” She slapped her credit card on the counter. “Eventually.”"

"“He might come in useful,” Cenuij said. “Yeah,” Zefla said. “So’s a broken leg if you want to kick yourself in the back of the head.”"

"She felt cold and battered and tired. This combat flying lark was supposed to have been just a little exotic incident in her life, something to tell people about when she was old. It had never been meant to get this important, never been planned to be this crucial and ghastly and hopeless. It certainly wasn’t supposed to be the end of everything. It couldn’t all just end, could it? Yes it could, she thought. Somehow she’d never really thought about it before, but yes; of course it could. She didn’t just accept it now; she knew it now. What a time to learn that particular lesson."

"“So,” he said to the monk, “you are of an Order which also despises the Great Infernal Wizard.” “Indeed, your gracious Majesty,” the monk said, looking down modestly at the carpet. His voice sounded respectful. “Our Belief—perhaps not so dissimilar from your own, more venerable and more widely followed creed, is that God is a Mad Scientist and we His experimental subjects, doomed forever to run the Maze of Life through apparently random and unjust punishments for meaningless and paltry rewards and no discernible good reason save His evil pleasure.”"

"When you have this sort of power, this responsibility, you can’t choose not to have it when the decisions become tough. You can’t afford to prevaricate or delegate; you have to be engaged. You can’t stay neutral; you can say you’re neutral, and try to act as though you are, but that neutrality will always help one side more than the other; that’s just the way power works...the leverage it exerts."

"“Details matter, though, don’t you think?” he said. “Sometimes what appear to be utterly inconsequential actions have the most enormous results. Chance makes the casual momentous. It is the fulcrum upon which the levers of action rest.”"

"Allow me to attenuate my portentousness for you."

"“I think,” she said carefully, “that perhaps too many people want things to be simple when they are not and cannot be. Encouraging that desire is seductive and rewarding, but also dangerous.”"

"“Choice,” he said heavily. A small smile disturbed his face. “We all think we have so much of that, don’t we?”"

"“Probably end up as one of those sordid cult leaders,” Zefla said after a while as they plodded into a bare area of the forest where a fire had left thousands of tree trunks standing upright and bare, black posts already surrounded by slender young trees forcing their way towards the sky around them. “You know, pedalling some weird concoction of re-tread gibberish and living in a palace while their followers sleep shifts and work the streets and give you this big flatline smile when you tell them where to stuff their tracts.”"

"Is there anything I can do? Just tell me. What can you do? Destroy things. All I can do is destroy things. It’s the only thing I’m any good at. Would you like me to destroy something? I want you to destroy everything! she screamed. Every fucking thing. All the evil men and compliant women, all the armies and companies and cults and faiths and orders and every stupid fucker in them! All of them! EVERYTHING!"

"Molgarin shook his head. “Oh dear,” he said. Something worse than cynicism must be abroad if even our aristocracy cannot accept that the rich and powerful may be motivated by purposes beyond acquiring yet more money and increased influence.” He put his head to one side, as though genuinely puzzled. “Can’t you see, Lady Sharrow? Once one has a certain amount of both, one turns to hobbies, or good works or philosophy. Some people become patrons of the arts or charities. Others may—charitably—be said to raise their own lives to the state of art, living as the common herd imagine they would live if they had the chance. And some of us attempt not merely to understand our history, but to influence meaningfully the course of the future.”"

"Hope could be more painful than despair."

"Sorry? Of course he was sorry. People were always sorry. Sorry they had done what they had done, sorry they were doing what they were doing, sorry they were going to do what they were going to do; but they still did whatever it was. The sorrow never stopped them; it just made them feel better. And so the sorrow never stopped. Fate, I’m sick of it all... Sorrow be damned, and all your plans. Fuck the faithful, fuck the committed, the dedicated, the true believers; fuck all the sure and certain people prepared to maim and kill whoever got in their way; fuck every cause that ended in murder and a child screaming."

"Not wide asleep; fast awake!"

"The King liked happy endings. You couldn’t blame the ancients for coming up with unhappy conclusions so often—they each spent all their single short life waiting either for oblivion or some absurd after-death torture—but that didn’t mean you had to stick faithfully to their paralyzed paradigms and ruin a good story with a depressing dénouement."

"“Is all she says true?” Asura whispered. “Ah,” Pieter said, smiling. “Now, that is a question. Let’s say it is all based on truth, but the facts are open to different interpretations from the one she supplies.”"

"“She seems very sincere,” Asura told Pieter. “A word with oddly positive connotations,” Peter said, nodding. “In my experience those who are most sincere are also the most morally suspect, as well as being incapable of producing or appreciating wit.”"

"“What happens happens,” continued the Resiler, “and cannot be made to unhappen. We are the equations; we cannot deny the algebra of the universe or the result it brings us. Die peacefully or in hysterics, with grace or with despair; it matters not. Prepare or ignore; it matters not. Very little matters very much and almost nothing matters greatly.”"

"Gadfium found these meetings exasperating; they were supposed to keep people up to date with developments and help facilitate actions which might be of use in the current emergency, but so far all they ever seemed to do was pander to some of the attendees’ feelings of self-importance and produce vast amounts of talk that substituted for deeds rather than leading to them."

"“Want to bet on it?” “Thank you, no. I believe gambling to be a pastime for the weak-minded.”"

"The first time he saw somebody else he felt a mixture of emotions; fear, joy, expectation and a kind of disappointment that this wilderness was not his alone."