# Quote — Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata

> “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.”

- Author: [Iain M. Banks](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks.md)
- Book: [The Hydrogen Sonata](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-hydrogen-sonata.md)
- Page: 210
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Iain_Banks#The_Hydrogen_Sonata_(2013)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-hydrogen-sonata/well-the-voice

## More from this book

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

p. 361 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-hydrogen-sonata/ah-dear-how.md)

> ~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?

p. 502 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-hydrogen-sonata/my-full-name.md)

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

p. 443 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-hydrogen-sonata/have-you-always.md)