Iain M. Banks

Quotes

1. “Aah...Yes, and how does madam wish to pay?”

   She slapped her credit card on the counter. “Eventually.”

   p. 172

2. 

   I’m negotiating a tricky course between the minefield of personal honesty on one side and the rocky coast of operational security on the other.

   p. 292

3. 

   Filhyn smiled. “Is it not always better to tell the truth though, Representative?”

   Errun looked at her, shook his head. “The truth? No matter what? For good or ill? Are you mad? I do hope you’re having a joke with me here, young lady….Don’t pretend you are so naive, Filhyn. The truth is not always useful, not always good. It’s like putting your faith in water. Yes, we need the rain, but too much can sweep you away in a flood and drown you. Like all great natural, elemental forces, the truth needs to be channelled, managed, controlled and intelligently, morally allocated.” He glared at her. “You are having a joke with me, aren’t you?”

   I might as well be, she thought. She wondered if she would finally be a real politician when she agreed with what Errun was saying.

   p. 260

4. 

   “I hear what you say,” Prin told him, keeping calm.… “It’s nonsense, of course, but it is interesting to know that you hold such views.”

   p. 446

5. 

   Backed up, tooled up, riled up. Time to waste something.

   p. 432

6. 

   And what was glory but something that reduced the more there were of you to share it?

   p. 262

7. 

   “Anyway, it was all terribly well organised. Done with military precision.” He barked a laugh. “Better than that, actually; didn’t miss and hit their own people.”

   p. 204

8. 

   Your position is perverse, farcical and as intellectually demeaning as it is morally destitute.

   p. 445

9. 

   I’m just puzzled why I’m here. All I can think of is you still want to know something else. Or is this just the first circle of Hell? Do I stay here for ever being bored to death?

   p. 311

10. 

    Very quick deaths, even given that they would have been wired in and speeded up, if I may just leap in front of any nascent and entirely vicarious moral qualms you may be about to suffer from, tiny human. Military personnel, babe; put themselves in harm’s way when they signed up. Just that the poor fuckers didn’t know it was my harm they were putting themselves in the way of. That’s war, doll; fairness comes excluded.

    p. 509

11. 

    Never underestimate the sheer selfishness and stupidity of people.

    p. 92

12. 

    That was the thing about traitors: they were people who’d already changed their minds at least once.

    p. 626