Ian M. Banks > Quotes

“~Of course, rather than the choice between what you threaten, and our allowing you to escape, we might engage with you on the instant, to prevent you from carrying out either.
~I never did tell you my whole name, did I?
~You did not. Many have remarked that your name would appear to be part of a longer one, and yet, unusually, even uniquely, nobody has heard the whole of it.
~May I tell you it now?
~Please do.
~My full name is the Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Mere Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath. Cool, eh?
~Such braggadocio. That smacks of smokescreen, not power.
~Take it as you will, chum. But how many Culture ships do you know of that exaggerate their puissance?”
― Ian M. Banks

“There was also the Argument of Increasing Decency, which basically held that cruelty was linked to stupidity and that the link between intelligence, imagination, empathy and good-behaviour-as-it-was-generally-understood – i.e. not being cruel to others – was as profound as these matters ever got.”
― Ian M. Banks

“Those who are most sincere are also the most morally suspect, as well as being incapable of producing or appreciating wit.”
― Ian M. Banks

“Perhaps it is different for humans, dear prince," she said, sounding sad, "but we have found that the underdisciplined child will bump up against life eventually and learn their lesson that way - albeit all the harder for their parents' earlier lack of courage and concern. The overdisciplined child lives all its life in a self-made cage, or bursts from it so wild and profligate with untutored energy they harm all about them, and always themselves. We prefer to underdiscipline, reckoning it better in the long drift, though it may seem harsher at the time."

"To do nothing is always easy." Ferbin did not try to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

"To do nothing when you are so tempted to do something and entirely have the means to do so, is harder. It grows easier only when you know you do nothing for the active betterment of others.”
― Ian M. Banks

“I should be ready to receive visitors again in a couple of dozen days or so and I anticipate a very full social calendar indeed thereafter. I fully intend to exploit my recent injuries and experiences without compunction and exaggerate outrageously my part in the taking of the Voehn ship, not to mention embellish my fight with the Voehn commander to the point of what will probably seem like complete unrecognisability, the first time you hear it. I’d appreciate your corroboration, providing you are able to enter into the spirit of the thing and not insist on being overly encumbered by the vulgar exigencies of objective truth, whatever version of it you may think you recall. What do you say?”
― Ian M. Banks

“Things mean pretty much what we want them to mean.”
― Ian M. Banks

“The ship told you the guilty systems recognizes no innocents. I'd say it does. It recognizes the innocence... only to violate it.”
― Ian M. Banks