Ian M. Banks

“~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