# Quote — Iain M. Banks, Matter

> It seemed at first glance like utter madness, yet it also, when one thought about it, appeared somehow no less implausible than any other explanation of how things truly were, and it had a sort of completeness about it that stifled argument. Assuming that every branching fork on the Universe map was taken randomly, all would still somehow be well; the likely things would always outnumber the unlikely and vastly outnumber the ludicrous, so as a rule things would happen much as one expected, with the occasional surprise and the very rare moment of utter incredulity.
>
> Pretty much as life generally was, in other words, in his experience. This was at once oddly satisfactory, mildly disappointing and strangely reassuring to Holse; fate was as fate was, and that was it.
>
> He immediately wondered how you could cheat.

- Author: [Iain M. Banks](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks.md)
- Book: [Matter](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/matter.md)
- Page: 387
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Iain_Banks#Matter_(2008)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/matter/it-seemed-at-first

## More from this book

> Roundly insulting one’s superiors behind their backs was one of the perks of being inferior, Choubris held.

p. 44 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/matter/roundly-insulting-ones.md)

> He was starting to change his mind about the old Warrior Code stuff knights and princes invoked, usually when they were drunk and in need of spilling their words, or trying to justify their poor behavior in some other field.
>
> Behave honourably and wish for a good death. He always dismissed it as self-serving bullshit, frankly; most of the people he’d been told were his betters were quite venally dishonourable, and the more they got the more the greedy bastards wanted, while those that weren’t like that were better behaved at least partly because they could afford to be.
>
> Was it more honourable to starve than to steal? Many people would say yes, the rarely those who’d actually experienced an empty belly, or a child whimpering with its own hunger. Was it more honourable to starve than to steal when others had the means to feed you but chose not to, unless you paid with money you did not have? He thought not. By choosing to starve you became your own oppressor, keeping yourself in line, harming yourself for having the temerity to be poor, when by rights that ought to be a constable’s job. Show any initiative or imagination and you were called lazy, shifty, crafty, incorrigible. So he’d dismissed talk of honour; it was just a way of making the rich and powerful feel better about themselves and the powerless and poverty-stricken feel worse.

p. 549 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/matter/he-was-starting.md)

> Ultimately the galaxy, indeed the sum of the universe in its entirety, was mostly nothing; average it all out and it made a pretty good vacuum. But within the foci of matter there were the systems, the stars and planets and habitats—what a cornucopia of life was there!

p. 167 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/matter/ultimately-the-galaxy.md)