Iain M. Banks

Quotes

1. “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.”

   p. 395

2. 

   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.

   p. 168

3. 

   People would swallow anything, just anything at all. Apparently some people found this dismaying. He thought it was a gift, the most wonderful opportunity to take advantage of the weak-minded.

   p. 160

4. 

   The Truth was the presumptuous name of the religion,…It arose from the belief that what appeared to be real life must in fact—according to some piously invoked statistical certitudes—be a simulation being run within some prodigious computational substrate in a greater and more encompassing reality beyond. This was a thought that had in some form, crossed the minds of most people and all civilisations…. However, everybody—well, virtually everybody, obviously—quickly or eventually came around to the idea that a difference that made no difference wasn’t a difference to be much bothered about, and one might as well get on with (what appeared to be) life.

   p. 199

5. 

   Faith is the eye that sees nothing and rejoices in it.

   p. 265

6. 

   Allow me to attenuate my portentousness for you.

   p. 298

7. 

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

   p. 367

8. 

   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.

   p. 207

9. 

   “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.”

   p. 132

10. 

    Being spoon-fed rosy-hued misinformation by the authorities was no more than people had come to expect—and preemptively discount. They only got suspicious when presented with what looked like the plain unvarnished truth.

    p. 85

11. 

    “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.”

    p. 132

12. 

    “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.”

    p. 298