{"author":"Iain M. Banks","author_id":"Iain+M.+Banks","total_quotes":57,"quotes":[{"text":"It seemed perverse to some, but for all their apparent militarism the Gzilt had remained peaceful over many millenia; it was the avowedly peaceful Culture that had , within living memory, taken part in an all-out galactic war against another civilisation.","author":"Iain M. Banks","tags":["culture","cynical-humor"],"id":669,"author_id":"Iain+M.+Banks"},{"text":"It was the soul of the machine, the ethological epicentre, the planetary ground zero of their commercial energy. I could almost feel it, shivering down like bomb-blasted rivers of glass from these undreaming towers of dark and light invading the snow-dark sky.","author":"Iain M. Banks","tags":["diziet-sma","ethological-epicentre","new-york-city","snow-dark-sky"],"id":3478,"author_id":"Iain+M.+Banks"},{"text":"A new collection of matter and information to present to the universe and to which it in turn will be presented; different, arguably equal parts of that great ever-repetitive, ever-changing jurisdiction of being.","author":"Iain M. Banks","tags":["birth","changing","ever-changing","ever-repetitive","jurisdiction-of-being","pregnancy","procreation","repetitive","the-universe"],"id":33710,"author_id":"Iain+M.+Banks"},{"text":"I love writing and can't imagine not being able to do it. I want an easy life and if it had been difficult doing it I wouldn't be doing it. I do admire writers who do it even though it costs them.","author":"Iain M. Banks","tags":["genius","hero","legend","science-fiction"],"id":43637,"author_id":"Iain+M.+Banks"},{"text":"The right place; that was what he was looking for. The right place. Place was all important, place meant everything. Take this rock…'Take you, rock,' he said. He squinted at it.Ah yes, here we have the nasty big flat rock, sitting doing nothing, just amoral and dull, and it sits like an island in the polluted pool. The pool is a tiny lake on the little island, and the island is in a drowned crater. The crater is a volcanic crater, the volcano forms part of an island in a big inland sea. The inland sea is like a giant lake on a continent and the continent is like an island sitting in the seas of the planet. The planet is like an island on the sea of space within its system, and the system floats within the cluster, which is like an island in the sea of the galaxy, which is like an island in the archipelago of of its local group, which is an island within the universe; the universe is like an island floating in a sea of space in the Continua, and they float like islands in the Reality, and…But down through the Continua, the Universe, the Local Group, the Galaxy, the Cluster, the System, the Planet, the Continent, the Island, the Lake, the Island… the rock remained. AND THAT MEANT THE ROCK, THE CRAPPY AWFUL ROCK HERE WAS THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE, THE CONTINUA, THE WHOLE REALITY!","author":"Iain M. Banks","tags":["humor","science","science-fiction"],"id":74130,"author_id":"Iain+M.+Banks"},{"text":"One believed what one was told to believe, what it made sense to believe. Unless one was a foreigner, of course, or a philosopher.","author":"Iain M. Banks","tags":["belief","cognitive-dissonance","confirmation-bias","foreigners","philosophy"],"id":75242,"author_id":"Iain+M.+Banks"},{"text":"In life you hoped to do what you could but mostly you did what you were told and that was the end of it.","author":"Iain M. Banks","tags":["decisions","life","wants"],"id":87909,"author_id":"Iain+M.+Banks"},{"text":"Everything was a metaphor; all things were something other than themselves. The pain, for example, was an ocean, and he was adrift on it. His body was a city and his mind a citadel. All communications between the two seemed to have been cut, but within the keep that was his mind he still had power. The part of his consciousness that was telling him the pain did not hurt, and that all things were like other things, was like...Like...He found it hard to think of a comparison. A magic mirror, maybe.","author":"Iain M. Banks","tags":["metaphor","pain"],"id":99259,"author_id":"Iain+M.+Banks"},{"text":"The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.","author":"Iain M. Banks","tags":["fiction","fiction-writing","writing","writing-craft"],"id":116182,"author_id":"Iain+M.+Banks"},{"text":"The game’s the thing. That’s the conventional wisdom, isn’t it? The fun is what matters, not the victory. To glory in the defeat of another, to need that purchased pride, is to show you are incomplete and inadequate to start with.","author":"Iain M. Banks","tags":["games","victory","winning"],"id":128830,"author_id":"Iain+M.+Banks"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":57,"pages":6,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}