Ken Reid > Ken's Quotes

“and was taken to the Forward Docks and a big, brightly lit hangar, where the Psychopath Class ex-Rapid Offensive Unit Frank Exchange of Views was waiting for her. Ulver laughed. 'It looks,' she snorted, 'like a dildo!' 'That's appropriate,' Churt Lyne said. 'Armed, it can fuck solar systems.”
― Iain M. Banks, Excession

“I just think people overvalue argument because they like to hear themselves talk.”
― Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons

“There is no God and we are his prophets.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility; and I affirm that tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind. Constantly then give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself; and let thy principles be brief and fundamental, which, as soon as thou shalt recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse the soul completely, and to send thee back free from all discontent with the things to which thou returnest. For with what art thou discontented? With the badness of men? Recall to thy mind this conclusion, that rational animals exist for one another, and that to endure is a part of justice, and that men do wrong involuntarily; and consider how many already, after mutual enmity, suspicion, hatred, and fighting, have been stretched dead, reduced to ashes; and be quiet at last.- But perhaps thou art dissatisfied with that which is assigned to thee out of the universe.- Recall to thy recollection this alternative; either there is providence or atoms, fortuitous concurrence of things; or remember the arguments by which it has been proved that the world is a kind of political community, and be quiet at last.- But perhaps corporeal things will still fasten upon thee.- Consider then further that the mind mingles not with the breath, whether moving gently or violently, when it has once drawn itself apart and discovered its own power, and think also of all that thou hast heard and assented to about pain and pleasure, and be quiet at last.- But perhaps the desire of the thing called fame will torment thee.- See how soon everything is forgotten, and look at the chaos of infinite time on each side of the present, and the emptiness of applause, and the changeableness and want of judgement in those who pretend to give praise, and the narrowness of the space within which it is circumscribed, and be quiet at last. For the whole earth is a point, and how small a nook in it is this thy dwelling, and how few are there in it, and what kind of people are they who will praise thee.”
― Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

“From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Queequeg explained to me that his world was very different from ours. However, one thing he learned quickly, was that within all groups of people there are kind men and there are unkind men.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“He had spent a lot of time thinking about himself, and had come to the conclusion that he was definitely not self-absorbed.”
― Scott Meyer, Off to Be the Wizard

“You see, faith doesn’t have to make sense. If it did, it wouldn’t be faith, it would be logic.”
― Scott Meyer, Off to Be the Wizard

“It’s amazing how quickly we get used to weirdness when it’s our own weirdness.”
― Scott Meyer, Off to Be the Wizard

“He tried to come up with a word that meant “witch,” that didn’t have any insulting or demeaning overtones. He couldn’t. In fact, after some thought, he couldn’t think of a word that meant female that men hadn’t imbued with some belittling shade of meaning. Finally, after a much longer silence than he had intended, he simply said, “I can understand why.”
― Scott Meyer, Off to Be the Wizard

“The advantage that religion has over magic or science is that man’s inability to understand is built into the system, so if an explanation is confusing or unsatisfying, it strengthens the point.”
― Scott Meyer, Off to Be the Wizard

“They couldn’t prove themselves right, so they channeled their energies into proving the other side wrong.”
― Scott Meyer, Off to Be the Wizard

“In fact, after some thought, he couldn’t think of a word that meant female that men hadn’t imbued with some belittling shade of meaning.”
― Scott Meyer, Off to Be the Wizard

“The day we stop learning is the day we stop living.”
― Scott Meyer, Off to Be the Wizard

“Sure, as a teenager he’d experimented with the whole pose, but found that rebelling against everything all the time was just too exhausting.”
― Scott Meyer, Off to Be the Wizard

“Phillip shook his head. “I understand all of these specs, but the numbers are all so large, I don’t know what any of it means. What on earth can a person do with four gigabytes of RAM?” “Upgrade it immediately,” Martin answered.”
― Scott Meyer, Off to Be the Wizard

“He drove to work, his car a sunny little island of calm in the middle of the swollen river of misery that was the morning commute.”
― Scott Meyer, Off to Be the Wizard

“Zakalwe, in all human societies we have ever reviewed, in every age and every state, there has seldom if ever been a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this simple fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots.”
― Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons

“Most people are not prepared to have their minds changed," he said. "And I think they know in their hearts that other people are just the same, and one of the reasons people become angry when they argue is that they realize just that, as they trot out their excuses."

"Excuses, eh?" Well, if this ain't cynicism, what is?" Erens snorted.

"Yes, excuses," he said, with what Erens thought might just have been a trace of bitterness. "I strongly suspect the things people believe in are usually just what they instinctively feel is right; the excuses, the justifications, the things you're supposed to argue about, come later. They're the least important part of the belief. That's why you can destroy them, win an argument, prove the other person wrong, and still they believe what they did in the first place." He looked at Erens. "You've attacked the wrong thing.”
― Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons

“But it was pointless, it was stupid; he thought about thoughtless things. If I were a seabird . . . but how could you be a seabird? If you were a seabird your brain would be tiny and stupid and you would love half-rotted fish guts and tweaking the eyes out of little grazing animals; you would know no poetry and you could never appreciate flying as fully as the human on the ground yearning to be you.
If you wanted to be a seabird you deserved to be one.”
― Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons

“I could try composing wonderful musical works, or day-long entertainment epics, but what would that do? Give people pleasure? My wiping this table gives me pleasure. And people come to a clean table, which gives them pleasure. And anyway" - the man laughed - "people die; stars die; universes die. What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead? Of course, if all I did was wipe tables, then of course it would seem a mean and despicable waste of my huge intellectual potential. But because I choose to do it, it gives me pleasure. And," the man said with a smile, "it's a good way of meeting people. So where are you from, anyway?”
― Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons

“But just because something does not have an ending doesn't mean it doesn't have a conclusion.”
― Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons

“The way to a man’s heart is through his chest!”
― Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons

“I once visited a place where they killed people by putting them in a chair. Not torture — that was common enough; beds and chairs were very much the par when it came to getting people helpless and confined, to inflict pain upon them — but actually set it up to kill them while they sat. They — get this — they either gassed them or they passed very high electric currents through them. A pellet dropped into a container beneath the seat, like some obscene image of a commode, producing a fatal gas; or a cap over their head, and their hands dipped in some conducting fluid, to fry their brains.
You want to know the punch line? Yeah, [...] give us the punch line. This same state had a law that forbade — and I quote — “cruel and unusual punishments!” Can you believe that?”
― Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons

“Myself,” said the drone sniffily, “I have never been able to see what virtue there could be in something that was eighty percent water.”
― Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons

“Can’t machines build these faster?” he asked the woman, looking around the starship shell.“Why, of course!” she laughed.“Then why do you do it?”“It’s fun. You see one of these big mothers sail out those doors for the first time, heading for deep space, three hundred people on board, everything working, the Mind quite happy, and you think, I helped build that. The fact a machine could have done it faster doesn’t alter the fact that it was you who actually did it.”
“Hmm,” he said.
“Well, you may ‘hmm’ as you wish,” the woman said, approaching a translucent hologram of the half-completed ship, where a few other construction workers were standing, pointing inside the model and talking. “But have you ever been gliding or swum underwater?”
“Yes,” he agreed.
The woman shrugged. “Yet birds fly better than we do, and fish swim better. Do we stop gliding or swimming because of this?”
He smiled. “I suppose not.”
“You suppose correctly,” the woman said. “And why?” She looked at him, grinning. “Because it’s fun.”
― Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons

“Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Now there is apparently a causal link between heroin addiction and vegetarianism.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“The fact that you use the term "cunt" in the same breath as "sexist", shows that you display the same muddled, fucked-up thinking oan this issue as you do oan everything else.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting