Iain M. Banks

Quotes

1. We live in an infinity of infinities, and we reshape our lives with every passing thought and each unconscious action, threading an ever-changing course through the myriad possibilities of existence. I lie here and ponder the events and decisions that led me to this point, the precise sequence of thoughts and actions that ended – for now – with me having nothing more constructive or urgent to do than think about those very eventualities.

   p. 57

2. 

   Whether the Dweller List existed or not, everybody appeared to be acting as though it did, and that was all that mattered. It was a bit like money; all about trust, about faith. The value lay in what people believed, not in anything intrinsic.

   p. 278

3. 

   And don’t forget Goldman’s Law: nobody knows anything. Nobody knows what will work. That’s why they make so many remakes and Part Twos; what looks like lack of imagination is really down to too much, as paranoid execs visualise all the things that could go wrong with a brand new, untested idea. Going with something containing elements that definitely worked in the past removes some of the terrifying uncertainty.

   p. 400

4. 

   Whenever one was struck by a previously unlikely-seeming idea that had come to appear plausible or even sensible, one ought to apply that test: was it inherently any more likely than solipsism? If solipsism seemed to make just as much sense, then the idea could be dismissed.

   p. 242

5. 

   Lying here, during all this time after my own small fall, it has become my conviction that things mean pretty much what we want them to mean. We’ll pluck significance from the least consequential happenstance if it suits us and happily ignore the most flagrantly obvious symmetry between separate aspects of our lives if it threatens some cherished prejudice or cosily comforting belief; we are blindest to precisely whatever might be most illuminating.

   p. 3

6. 

   Now, our tutor pointed out that there was a weakness in the hard-line or extreme solipsist’s position which came down to the question why, if they were all that existed, they bothered to deceive themselves so? Why did it appear to the solipsistic entity that there was an external reality in the first place, and, more to the point, why this one specifically? Why did the solipsist appear to be constrained in any way by that supposedly physically non-existent and therefore utterly pliable reality?

   p. 243

7. 

   “As a matter of fact I did flirt with Socialism, in my youth.”

   “That’s when you were at university, was it?”

   He smiled. “Yes. University. But then I saw how much more comfortable life could be as one of the exploiters rather than one of the exploited. Plus I decided that if the proles were so stupid as to let themselves be exploited, who was I to stand in their way?”

   p. 114

8. 

   It is an insane conceit. Power always drives to perpetuate itself, but this is a phenomenal extra distillation of idiocy. Only people already riddled with the internalised special pleading and self-importance that too much power brings could even start to imagine that this might be in any way sustainable.

   p. 331

9. 

   Perdition awaits at the end of a road constructed entirely from good intentions, the devil emerges from the details and hell abides in the small print.

   p. 300

10. 

    The bad guys tend to enjoy killing people, preferably in large numbers. The good guys – and girls – don’t; they get a buzz when infant mortality rates go down and life expectancy goes up. The bad guys like to tell people what to do, the good guys are happy to encourage people to make up their own minds. The bad guys like to keep the riches and the power to themselves and their cronies, the good guys want the money and power spread evenly, subject to the making-up-your-own-minds thing.

    p. 322

11. 

    Libertarianism. A simple-minded right-wing ideology ideally suited to those unable or unwilling to see past their own sociopathic self-regard.

    p. 326

12. 

    Scotland is wet and dreary. Don’t let anybody tell you different. Even the hills are mostly just big mounds, not proper mountains like the Alps or the Rockies. People will tell you it’s all romantic and rugged but I’ve yet to see the evidence. Even when it’s nice it’s covered in a cloud of these bastard little insects called midges so you have to stay inside anyway. Plus it’s full of Scots. Case rested.

    p. 108