{
  "type": "book",
  "site": {
    "name": "Leafy Quotes",
    "language": "en",
    "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com"
  },
  "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.",
  "title": "Excession",
  "slug": "excession",
  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/excession",
  "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/excession.json",
  "markdown": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/excession.md",
  "author": {
    "name": "Iain M. Banks",
    "slug": "iain-m-banks",
    "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks"
  },
  "cover": "https://quivercdn.com/covers/orbit/iain-m-banks/excession_978-03-5652-167-1.jpg",
  "quotes_count": 9,
  "quotes": [
    {
      "id": "eb0e9106-9c9e-4434-a23f-7cba110e729f",
      "slug": "even-the-pain",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/excession/even-the-pain",
      "text": "Even the pain of what had felt on occasion like an irretrievably broken heart had consistently proved less lasting than she’d initially imagined and expected; the revelation that a boy’s taste was so grotesquely deficient he could prefer somebody else to her always reduced both the intensity and the duration of the anguish her heart demanded be endured to mark such a loss of regard.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 180,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "love",
          "slug": "love",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/love"
        },
        {
          "name": "separation",
          "slug": "separation",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/separation"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Iain_Banks#Excession_(1996)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:17"
    },
    {
      "id": "c30559f8-a255-49d6-8f3d-f9cdd1229a44",
      "slug": "i-am-as-i-have",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/excession/i-am-as-i-have",
      "text": "I am, as I have always been, of the opinion that while the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 269,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "morality",
          "slug": "morality",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/morality"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Iain_Banks#Excession_(1996)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:17"
    },
    {
      "id": "a233ad89-5ab7-46e7-a51e-068c7ffa861c",
      "slug": "she-supposed-she",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/excession/she-supposed-she",
      "text": "She supposed she ought to feel impressed that Genar-Hofoen was sticking to his principles in the face of imminent death—and she did feel a little admiration—but mostly she just thought he was being stupid.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 369,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "stupidity",
          "slug": "stupidity",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/stupidity"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Iain_Banks#Excession_(1996)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:17"
    },
    {
      "id": "5346d17f-bf03-4c6f-9b76-d8f09d21c2c1",
      "slug": "death-he-remembered",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/excession/death-he-remembered",
      "text": "Death, he remembered somebody saying once, was a kind of victory. To have lived a long good life, a life of prodigious pleasure and minimal misery, and then to die; that was to have won. To attempt to hang on forever risked ending up in some as-yet-unglimpsed horror future. What if you lived forever and all that had gone before, however terrible things had sometimes appeared to be in the past, however badly people had behaved to each other throughout history, was nothing compared to what was yet to come? Suppose in the great book of days that told the story of everything, all the gone, done past was merely a bright, happy introduction compared to the main body of the work, an unending tale of unbearable pain scraped in blood on a parchment of living skin? Better to die than risk that. Live well and then die, so that the you that is you now can never be again, and only tricks can re-create something that might think it is you, but is not.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 259,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "death",
          "slug": "death",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/death"
        },
        {
          "name": "immortality",
          "slug": "immortality",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/immortality"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Iain_Banks#Excession_(1996)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:17"
    },
    {
      "id": "3f4b4a40-bf5a-4ed7-93ff-13230979850c",
      "slug": "i-am-not",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/excession/i-am-not",
      "text": "I am not being obtuse. You are being paranoid.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 136,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "humor",
          "slug": "humor",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Iain_Banks#Excession_(1996)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:17"
    },
    {
      "id": "1e6b2ab8-7682-4993-8a0f-ab9c3e49ef98",
      "slug": "how-depressing-the",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/excession/how-depressing-the",
      "text": "How depressing, the Sleeper Service thought. That it should all come down to this; the person with the biggest stick prevails.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 372,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "power",
          "slug": "power",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power"
        },
        {
          "name": "strength",
          "slug": "strength",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/strength"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Iain_Banks#Excession_(1996)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:17"
    },
    {
      "id": "11c1af59-7740-4f40-8b99-0378a817ade8",
      "slug": "he-wanted-to-be-who",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/excession/he-wanted-to-be-who",
      "text": "He wanted to be who he was, not the person he would become if he lost the one trait that distinguished him from everybody else, no matter how perverse that decision seemed to others.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 129,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "identity",
          "slug": "identity",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/identity"
        },
        {
          "name": "individualism",
          "slug": "individualism",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/individualism"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Iain_Banks#Excession_(1996)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:17"
    },
    {
      "id": "107d19b6-028a-4dd6-bb2d-de15bb13a756",
      "slug": "it-was-like",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/excession/it-was-like",
      "text": "It was like living half your life in a tiny, stuffy, warm gray box, and being moderately happy in there because you knew no better...and then discovering a little hole in one corner of the box, a tiny opening which you could get a finger into, and tease and pull at, so that eventually you created a tear, which led to a greater tear, which led to the box falling apart around you...so that you stepped out of the tiny box’s confines into startlingly cool, clear fresh air and found yourself on top of a mountain, surrounded by deep valleys, sighing forests, soaring peaks, glittering lakes, sparkling snowfields and a stunning, breathtakingly blue sky. And that, of course, wasn’t even the start of the real story, that was more like the breath that is drawn in before the first syllable of the first word of the first paragraph of the first chapter of the first book of the first volume of the story.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 120,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "freedom",
          "slug": "freedom",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom"
        },
        {
          "name": "change",
          "slug": "change",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/change"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Iain_Banks#Excession_(1996)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:17"
    },
    {
      "id": "05929a10-2493-4bad-b610-1d76af2bf0a4",
      "slug": "there-came-a-point",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/excession/there-came-a-point",
      "text": "There came a point when if a conspiracy was that powerful and subtle it became pointless to worry about it.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 149,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "conspiracy theories",
          "slug": "conspiracy-theories",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/conspiracy-theories"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Iain_Banks#Excession_(1996)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:53:17"
    }
  ]
}