Valeri Sokolov

“She was one of the unfortunates trying to get some sort of human grasp of Earth’s economics, and deserved all the light relief she could get. I recall that all through that year you could tell the economists by their distraught look and slightly glazed-looking eyes.”
― Iain M. Banks, The State of the Art

“Yet at the same time there is something about her deportment which I – and I suspect most other males – find off-putting, and even slightly threatening. A certain immodest forthrightness in her bearing is the cause of this, perhaps, plus the suspicion that while she pays flawless lip service to the facts of life which dictate the accepted and patent preeminence of the male, she does so with a sort of unwarranted humour, producing in us males the unsettlingly contrary feeling that she is indulging us.”
― Iain M. Banks, Inversions

“If we had some cheese, we could have a ham-and-cheese sandwich,” replies Father Captain de Soya, “if we had some ham.”
― Dan Simmons, Endymion

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