Iain Banks
Iain Banks
Iain Bankswas a Scottish author. He wrote mainstream fiction under the name Iain Banks and science fiction as Iain M. Banks, including the initial of his adopted middle name Menzies...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 February 1954
accounting mysticism
Maybe it wasn't anything remotely to do with religion, mysticism or metaphilosophy after all; maybe it was more banal; maybe it was just...accounting.
normal opinion moral
I am, as I have always been, of the opinion that while the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.
giving benefits fruit
If you have any helpful suggestions I'd be pleased to hear them. If all you can do is make snide insinuations then it would probably benefit all concerned if you bestowed the fruits of your prodigious wit on someone with the spare time to give them the consideration they doubtless deserve.
paranoid
I am not being obtuse. You are being paranoid.
eye dark night
Here, in the bare dark face of night A calm unhurried eye draws sight We see in what we think we fear The cloudings of our thought made clear
tactics sides usual
The combination of modern ordnance and outdated tactics had, as usual, created enormous casualties on both sides.
taken men practice
You're a wicked man." "Thank you. It's taken years of diligent practice.
knowing study things-to-do
What is all your studying worth, all your learning, all your knowledge, if it doesn't lead to wisdom? And what's wisdom but knowing what is right, and what is the right thing to do?
salvation my-own
There are no gods, we are told, so I must make my own salvation.
sky aliens wells
Well," he sighed to no one in particular, and looked up into yet another alien sky. "Here we are again.
ocean nonsense devalue
Any such inklings were like a few scattered grains of truth dissolved in an ocean of nonsense, and were anyway generally inextricably bound up with patently paranoid ravings which served only to devalue the small amounts of sense and pertinence with which they were associated.
independent class use
Empires are synonymous with centralized if occasionally schismatized hierarchical power structures in which influence is restricted to an economically privileged class retaining its advantages through usually a judicious use of oppression and skilled manipulation of both the society's information dissemination systems and its lesser as a rule nominally independent power systems. In short, it's all about dominance.
achievement
What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead?
superstitions shapes reason
Reason shapes the future, but superstition infects the present.