Allan

“Perdition awaits at the end of a road constructed entirely from good intentions, the devil emerges from the details and hell abides in the small print.”
― Iain M. Banks, Transition

“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

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

“I think the easiest people to fool are ourselves. Fooling ourselves may even be a necessary precondition for fooling others.”
― Iain Banks, The Bridge