A Quote by 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 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.
Apart from the obvious advantages of having ice to melt, filter, then drink, you can also break apart the water's hydrogen from its oxygen. Use the hydrogen and some of the oxygen as active ingredients in rocket fuel and keep the rest of the oxygen for breathing. And in your spare time between space missions, you can always go ice skating on the frozen lake created with the extracted water.
With sufficient water on the Moon, solar energy can be used to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is, of course, critical for humans to breathe and the water important for us to drink.
My habit of attacking Huns dangling from their parachutes led to many arguments in the mess. Some officers, of the Eton and Sandhurst type, thought it was 'unsportsmanlike' to do it. Never having been to a public school, I was unhampered by such considerations of form. I just pointed out that there was a bloody war on, and that I intended to avenge my pals.
My mom had bought this camera to take classes herself and I remember working with her on it, understanding how the stop-motion [worked], having a high shutter speed and things like that. Long before I picked it up myself, I remember being on a slide at a country club going into the water and wanting my mother to put in on a high shutter speed so she could catch me on the slide without it being blurred. I remember having fun with her: "Let me go on the slide and you'll catch me in motion!" Those are some of the little moments in my artistic making.
It wasn't until I started reading and found books they wouldn't let us read in school that I discovered you could be insane and happy and have a good life without being like everybody else.
I discovered Deborah Ellis's books in the school library after my head teacher encouraged me to go beyond the school curriculum and look for books I might enjoy.
We have seen pictures [of mars] where there there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe.
When something is discovered by people in movie theaters, it's discovered by people who are all together, and there's a sort of feeling of an event about it. And when it's on video, it's like something is being discovered in the library or something. It's like having a second life in public libraries. It's just like individuals, and it's less of a... We can't participate in it the same way.
There is no water in oxygen, no water in hydrogen: it comes bubbling fresh from the imagination of the living God, rushing from under the great white throne of the glacier. The very thought of it makes one gasp with an elemental joy no metaphysician can analyse.
I like hot people being hot. How else do you explain my high school infatuation with Ricky Martin in all his shirtless glory?
In Salford, we had fish in our tap water. I remember, one hot summer day, running to the toilet at playtime and dunking our heads in a sink full of water. I remember putting my head in and seeing all these little fish in it.
The weather here is gorgeous. It's mild and feels like it's in the eighties. The hot dog vendors got confused because of the weather and thought it was spring, so they accidentally changed the hot dog water in their carts.
I remember when I was a kid I thought I could either be an athletic water drinker, like an Olympic-level water drinker, or I could invent Windex. Which I thought was really smart, because it already existed.
Once my husband said to me, 'I'm going to have some coffee. Do you want me to put some hot water on for you?' I thought that was the least he could do considering I was giving birth.
I really loved ["The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P" by Adelle Waldman]. It's having a really hot moment. Unlike many hot books, it's actually really wonderful. I tend to have that reaction: I don't want to read it if everyone thinks it's cool. It was a really interesting insight into being young and male. Now that made me feel really thankful for my boyfriend and really thankful because he wasn't like that protagonist, but I know so many people who are like that protagonist.
I remember not having a hot water tank, so we had to use a kettle for hot showers. So, you know, we would put the kettle on and go have a shower, and then my mum would come bring three or four kettles in, just to heat them up. And it would take five, 10 minutes for every kettle to heat up.
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