Top 117 Quotes & Sayings by Iain Banks

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Scottish writer Iain Banks.

Last updated on September 11, 2024.

Iain Banks was a Scottish author, writing mainstream fiction as Iain Banks and science fiction as Iain M. Banks, adding the initial of his adopted middle name Menzies. After the success of The Wasp Factory (1984), he began to write full time. His first science fiction book, Consider Phlebas, appeared in 1987, marking the start of the Culture series. His books have been adapted for theatre, radio and television. In 2008, The Times named Banks in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Scottish - Writer | February 16, 1954 - June 9, 2013

Source: Wikipedia

In so much of politics you're not allowed to disagree with what's been agreed.

Iain Banks

My point has always been that, ever since the Industrial Revolution, science fiction has been the most important genre there is.

Iain Banks

I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and plots and characters organised into this narrative framework.

Iain Banks

I've always loved Scotland, and I'm not a huge fan of big cities, to be honest. I like them to dip into for a bit, but I'm not sure I would want to live in one again.

Iain Banks

In theory, I work an eight-hour day and a five-day week which means I can socialise with my pals who mostly have normal jobs like teaching and computer programming.

Iain Banks

Smell is a very animal thing, almost reptilian, where the more cerebral things like reading less so.

Iain Banks

Science fiction has its own history, its own legacy of what's been done, what's been superseded, what's so much part of the furniture it's practically part of the fabric now, what's become no more than a joke... and so on. It's just plain foolish, as well as comically arrogant, to ignore all this, to fail to do the most basic research.

Iain Banks

I still find it hard to understand that anyone could argue that you can't have machines that exhibit consciousness.

Iain Banks

I love writing and can't imagine not being able to do it. I want an easy life and if it had been difficult I wouldn't be doing it. I do admire writers who do it even though it costs them.

Iain Banks

Even in my side of the world, I've been in publishing for what, 25 or 26 years, and it's gone from being a gentlemen's club to being a few big players, and it's very corporatised.

Iain Banks

I remember being shocked when I discovered some of my school pals didn't have books in their homes. I thought it was like not having oxygen, or hot water.

Iain Banks

I don't really do themes. I might accidentally, but themes are an emergent phenomena of the writing of the book, of just trying to get a story out there.

Iain Banks

I deliberately keep myself apart from a lot of stuff; I don't Tweet, I don't do Facebook, I don't blog, and that's largely because I spend my working life staring at a screen and hitting a keyboard, I am trying to cut down on that, not increase it.

Iain Banks

I just come up with the stories and write them as well as I can. There's not really a great deal of strokey-beard thinking going on.

Iain Banks

I wouldn't like to be a character in one of my books!

Iain Banks

I think a lot of people are frightened of technology and frightened of change, and the way to deal with something you're frightened of is to make fun of it. That's why science fiction fans are dismissed as geeks and nerds.

Iain Banks

As long as a film stays unmade, the book is entirely yours, it belongs to the writer. As soon as you make it into a film, suddenly more people see it than have ever read the book.

Iain Banks

I think the future stopped looking American when you think back to Blade Runner and Neuromancer, when it started to look more Japanese.

Iain Banks

You have to have something worth saying and then the ability to say it- writing's a double skill, really.

Iain Banks

A lot of what the 'Culture' is about is a reaction to all the science fiction I was reading in my very early teens.

Iain Banks

I'm not a great believer in awards-of course the fact that I've never won one has nothing to do with it at all!

Iain Banks

Science fiction is trying to find alternative ways of looking at realities.

Iain Banks

Torture is such a slippery slope; as soon as you allow a society or any legal system to do that, almost instantly you get a situation where people are being tortured for very trivial reasons.

Iain Banks

I think we need politicians; we need people who want to serve.

Iain Banks

By the usual reckoning, the worst books make the best films.

Iain Banks

As a writer, you get to play, you get alter time, you get to come up with the smart lines and the clever comebacks you wish you'd thought of.

Iain Banks

You get so caught up in what you're writing - action sequences tend to do that more than anything else because you're living it, and feeling for your characters.

Iain Banks

I still have some of my old University essays, and I do still have my drawing book from primary year seven.

Iain Banks

Most mainstream male fiction is littered with heroines, and female characters are basically so great, you want to fall in love with them.

Iain Banks

'Dead Air' is full of rants; it's a rant-based book. Yes, it's self-indulgence. I plead guilty; mea culpa.

Iain Banks

Technology determines the possibilities of society. It doesn't matter whether you start out from a fascist state or a communist state or a free-market state.

Iain Banks

I'm an only child so am happy with my own company and I don't really get lonely.

Iain Banks

There is a quite a lot of effort involved but I find action sequences some of the quickest to write and the most fun.

Iain Banks

The History Of The Universe In Three Words CHAPTER ONE Bang! CHAPTER TWO sssss CHAPTER THREE crunch. THE END

Iain Banks

My gratitude extends beyond the limits of my capacity to express it.

Iain Banks

There has seldom if ever a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this simple fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots.

Iain Banks

The point is, there is no feasible excuse for what are, for what we have made of ourselves. We have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanaticism before fairness, and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others

Iain Banks

There's an old Sysan saying that the soup of life is salty enough without adding tears to it.

Iain Banks

The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.

Iain Banks

If this goes badly and I make a crater, I want it named after me!

Iain Banks

Reason shapes the future, but superstition infects the present.

Iain Banks

One should never regret one's excesses, only one's failures of nerve.

Iain Banks

Political correctness is what right-wing bigots call what everybody else calls being polite

Iain Banks

People can be teachers and idiots; they can be philosophers and idiots; they can be politicians and idiots... in fact I think they have to be... a genius can be an idiot. The world is largely run for and by idiots; it is no great handicap in life and in certain areas is actually a distinct advantage and even a prerequisite for advancement.

Iain Banks

Empathize with stupidity and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot.

Iain Banks

People were always sorry. Sorry they had done what they had done, sorry they were doing what they were doing, sorry they were going to do what they were going to do; but they still did whatever it is. The sorrow never stopped them; it just made them feel better. And so the sorrow never stopped.

Iain Banks

All you ever were was a little bit of the universe, thinking to itself. Very specific; this bit, here, right now. All the rest was fantasy.

Iain Banks

I just think people overvalue argument because they like to hear themselves talk.

Iain Banks

After doing extensive research, I can definitely tell you that single malt whiskies are good to drink.

Iain Banks

All our lives are symbols. Everything we do is part of a pattern we have at least some say in. The strong make their own patterns and influence other people's, the weak have their courses mapped out for them. The weak and the unlucky, and the stupid.

Iain Banks

One of the advantages of having laws is the pleasure one may take in breaking them.

Iain Banks

One should never mistake pattern for meaning.

Iain Banks

Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place - and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all - so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.

Iain Banks

A guilty system recognizes no innocents.

Iain Banks

You need to read more science fiction. Nobody who reads science fiction comes out with this crap about the end of history

Iain Banks

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.

Iain Banks

I am not being obtuse. You are being paranoid.

Iain Banks

Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.

Iain Banks

Half the fun of writing a novel is finding out from other people later on what you actually meant.

Iain Banks

One of your American professors said that to study religion was merely to know the mind of man, but if one truly wanted to know the mind of God, you must study physics.

Iain Banks

Top 117 Quotes & Sayings by Iain Banks

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