E.B. > E.B.'s Quotes

“Experience as well as common sense indicated that the most reliable method of avoiding self-extinction was not to equip oneself with the means to accomplish it in the first place.”
― Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

“A guilty system recognizes no innocents.”
― Iain M. Banks, The Player of Games

“Don't you have a religion?" Dorolow asked Horza.

"Yes," he replied, not taking his eyes away from the screen on the wall above the end of the main mess-room table. "My survival."

"So... your religion dies with you. How sad," Dorolow said, looking back from Horza to the screen. The Changer let the remark pass.”
― Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

“They sought to take the unfairness out of existence, to remove the mistakes in the transmitted message of life which gave it any point or advancement...”
― Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

“He could not believe that ordinary people in the Culture really wanted the war, no matter how they had voted. They had their communist Utopia. They were soft and pampered and indulged, and the Contact section’s evangelical materialism provided their conscience-salving good works. What more could they want? The war had to be the Mind’s idea; it was part of their clinical drive to clean up the galaxy, make it run on nice, efficient lines, without waste, injustice or suffering. The fools in the Culture couldn’t see that one day the Minds would start thinking how wasteful and inefficient the humans in the Culture themselves were.”
― Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

“The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines they had (at however great a remove) brought into being: the urge not to feel useless.”
― Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

“Us with our busy, busy little lives, finding no better way to pass our years than in competitive disdain.”
― Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

“That is the way with all of your kind… It is how you are made; you must all strive to claw your way over the backs of your fellow humans during the short time you are permitted in the universe, breeding when you can, so that the strongest strain survive and the weakest die. I would no more blame you for that than I would try to convert some non-sentient carnivore to vegetarianism. You are all on your own side.”
― Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

“Better still to have problems than to let death eradicate them all....”
― Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

“I don’t care how self-righteous the Culture feels, or how many people the Idirans kill. They’re on the side of life—boring, old-fashioned biological life; smelly, fallible, short-sighted, God knows, but real life. You’re ruled by your machines. You’re an evolutionary dead end.”
― Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

“This was what the Culture offered, this was its signal, its advertisement, its legacy: chaos from order, destruction from construction, death from life.”
― Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

“You could smash and destroy from unthinkable distances, obliterate planets from beyond their own system and provoke stars into novae from light-years off... and still have no good idea why you were really fighting.”
― Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

“The individual is the fruit of mistake; therefore only the process has validity…. So who’s to speak for him?”
― Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

“Indeed, a case could be made for holding that the Culture was its machines, that they represented it at a more fundamental level than did any single human or group of humans within the society.”
― Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

“Action appealed to him most; it was the warriors' creed. When in doubt, do.”
― Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

“It had flaws, but what does that matter when it comes to matters of the heart? We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“Books are a poor substitute for female companionship, but they are easier to find.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“I have an apple that thinks its a pear. And a bun that thinks it’s a cat. And a lettuce that thinks its a lettuce."
"It’s a clever lettuce, then."
"Hardly," she said with a delicate snort. "Why would anything clever think it’s a lettuce?"
"Even if it is a lettuce?" I asked.
"Especially then," she said. "Bad enough to be a lettuce. How awful to think you are a lettuce too.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“Knowing your own ignorance is the first step to enlightenment.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“You can divide infinity an infinite number of times, and the resulting pieces will still be infinitely large,” Uresh said in his odd Lenatti accent. “But if you divide a non-infinite number an infinite number of times the resulting pieces are non-infinitely small. Since they are non-infinitely small, but there are an infinite number of them, if you add them back together, their sum is infinite. This implies any number is, in fact, infinite.”
“Wow,” Elodin said after a long pause. He leveled a serious finger at the Lenatti man. “Uresh. Your next assignment is to have sex. If you do not know how to do this, see me after class.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“All the truth in the world is held in stories.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“It’s not over if you’re still here,” Chronicler said. “It’s not a tragedy if you’re still alive.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“When you love something, you have to make sure it loves you back, or you'll bring about no end of trouble chasing it.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“Teccam explains there are two types of secrets. There are secrets of the mouth and secrets of the heart.

Most secrets are secrets of the mouth. Gossip shared and small scandals whispered. There secrets long to be let loose upon the world. A secret of the mouth is like a stone in your boot. At first you’re barely aware of it. Then it grows irritating, then intolerable. Secrets of the mouth grow larger the longer you keep them, swelling until they press against your lips. They fight to be let free.

Secrets of the heart are different. They are private and painful, and we want nothing more than to hide them from the world. They do not swell and press against the mouth. They live in the heart, and the longer they are kept, the heavier they become.

Teccam claims it is better to have a mouthful of poison than a secret of the heart. Any fool will spit out poison, he says, but we hoard these painful treasures. We swallow hard against them every day, forcing them deep inside us. They they sit, growing heavier, festering. Given enough time, they cannot help but crush the heart that holds them.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“I am no poet. I do not love words for the sake of words. I love words for what they can accomplish. Similarly, I am no arithmetician. Numbers that speak only of numbers are of little interest to me.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“I don't mind being called a liar. I am. I am a marvelous liar. But I hate being called a liar when I´m telling the perfect truth.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“You’re my safe harbor in an endless stormy sea. You’re my shady willow on a sunny day. You’re sweet music in a distant room. You’re unexpected cake on a rainy day. You’re my bright penny on the roadside, you are worth more than the moon on the long night walk. You are sweet wine in my mouth, a song in my throat and laughter in my heart.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“You know, I met a wise man centuries ago in China who said to me, ‘He who lets fear rule him, has fear for a master. (Acheron)
Confucius? (Talon)
No, Minh-Quan. He was a fisherman who used to sell what I’m told was the best zong zi ever made. (Acheron)”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, Night Embrace

“My bad luck got tangled up with my bad decisions, and I'm paying for it.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear