Justin Waller > Justin's Quotes

“-How long do you want these messages to remain secret?[...]
+I want them to remain secret for as long as men are capable of evil.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“Pull on the new flesh like borrowed gloves
and burn your fingers once again.”
― Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon

“Though drones, avatars and even humans are one thing; the loss of any is not without moral and diplomatic import, of course, but might be dismissed as merely unfortunate and regrettable, something to be smoothed over through the usual channels. Attacking a ship, on the other hand, is an unambiguous act of war.”
― Iain M. Banks, Surface Detail

“Insult, like many such feelings, is experienced in the soul of the person addressed; it is not something that can be granted or withheld by the person doing the addressing.”
― Iain M. Banks, Surface Detail

“-"Then what," Lededje asked, trying to keep her voice cold and not get caught up in the avatar´s obvious enthusiasm, "is making you smile about a disaster?"

-"Well, first, I didn´t cause it! Nothing to do with me, hands clean. Always a bonus.”
― Iain M. Banks, Surface Detail

“Prin let the old one witter on. They could make him stay in here, stop him from leaving and stop him from offering any violence to this dream-image of the old representative, but they couldn’t stop his attention from wandering. The techniques learned in lecture theatres and later honed to perfection in faculty meetings were proving their real worth at last. He could vaguely follow what was being said without needing to bother with the detail. When he’d been a student he had assumed he could do this because he was just so damn smart and basically already knew pretty much all they were trying to teach him. Later, during seemingly endless committee sessions, he’d accepted that a lot of what passed for useful information-sharing within an organisation was really just the bureaucratic phatic of people protecting their position, looking for praise, projecting criticism, setting up positions of non-responsibility for up-coming failures and calamities that were both entirely predictable but seemingly completely unavoidable, and telling each other what they all already knew anyway. The trick was to be able to re-engage quickly and seamlessly without allowing anyone to know you’d stopped listening properly shortly after the speaker had first opened their mouth.”
― Iain M. Banks, Surface Detail

“So basically you're sticking around to watch us all fuck up ?"
"Yes. It's one of life's few guaranteed constants.”
― Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata

“The History Of The Universe In Three Words

CHAPTER ONE
Bang!

CHAPTER TWO
sssss

CHAPTER THREE
crunch.

THE END”
― Iain M. Banks

“There was something comforting about having a vast hydrogen furnace burning millions of tons of material a second at the centre of a solar system. It was cheery.”
― Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata

“Common misconception that; that fun is relaxing. If it is, you’re not doing it right.”
― Iain M. Banks, The Player of Games

“He might come in useful.'
'Yeah. So's a broken leg if you want to kick yourself in the back of the head.”
― Iain M. Banks, Against a Dark Background

“Once one survives the trough that comes with the understanding that people are going to go on being stupid and cruel to each other no matter what, probably for ever – if one survives; many people choose suicide at this point instead – then one starts to take the attitude, Oh well, never mind.”
― Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata

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

“One should never mistake pattern … for meaning.”
― Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata

“Thing about emergencies,” he said, sounding weary. “Rarely occur when they’d be convenient.”
― Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata

“then there’s nothing worse I can wish on you than to be exactly the fuckhead you so obviously are.”
― Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons

“Happily, I am not human, Parinherm thought, and this is only a simulation.”
― Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata

“The story,” the intruder said, settling back in the chair. “Once upon a time, over the gravity well and far away, there was a magical land where they had no kings, no laws, no money and no property, but where everybody lived like a prince, was very well-behaved and lacked for nothing. And these people lived in peace, but they were bored, because paradise can get that way after a time, and so they started to carry out missions of good works; charitable visits upon the less well-off, you might say; and they always tried to bring with them the thing that they saw as the most precious gift of all; knowledge; information; and as wide a spread of that information as possible, because these people were strange in that they despised rank, and hated kings . . . and all things hierarchic”
― Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons

“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

“However, there is another reaction to the never-ending plethora of unoriginal idiocies that life throws up with such erratic reliability, besides horror and despair.” “What’s that?” “A kind of glee. Once one survives the trough that comes with the understanding that people are going to go on being stupid and cruel to each other no matter what, probably for ever – if one survives; many people choose suicide at this point instead – then one starts to take the attitude, Oh well, never mind. It would be far preferable if things were better, but they’re not, so let’s make the most of it. Let’s see what fresh fuckwittery the dolts can contrive to torment themselves with this time.”
― Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata

“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

“You been mud wrestling..?' 'Only with my conscience.' 'Really? Who won?' 'Well, it was one of those rare occasions when violence really doesn't solve anything.”
― Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons

“obsession is just what those too timorous to follow an idea through to its logical conclusion call determination.”
― Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata

“I'm a fucking starship; I'm allowed to cheat.”
― Iain M. Banks

“faith is belief without reason; we operate on reason and nothing but. I have zero faith in my crew, just absolute confidence.”
― Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata

“Meaning is everywhere. There is always meaning. Or at least all things show a disturbing tendency to have meaning ascribed to them when intelligent creatures are present. It’s just that there’s no final Meaning, with a capital M. Though the illusion that there might be is comforting for a certain class of mind.”
― Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata

“Sometimes what goes without saying is best said anyway.”
― Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata