“Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place - and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all - so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Inversions
“One believed what one was told to believe, what it made sense to believe. Unless one was a foreigner, of course, or a philosopher.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Inversions
“As you say, DeWar, our shame comes from the comparison. We know we might be generous and compassionate and good, and could behave so, yet something else in our nature makes us otherwise." She smiled a small, empty smile. "Yes, I feel something I recognise as love. Something I remember, something I may discuss and mill and theorise over." She shook her head. "But it is not something I know. I am like a blind woman taking about how a tree must look, or a cloud. Love is something I have a dim memory of, the way someone who went blind in their early childhood might recall the sun, or the face of their mother. I know affection from my fellow whore-wives, DeWar, and I sense regard from you and feel some in return. I have a duty to the Protector, just as he feels he has a duty to me. As far as that goes, I am content. But love? That is for the living, and I am dead.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Inversions
“Patience can be a means of letting matters mature to a proper state for action, not just a way of letting time slip away.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Inversions
“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, quote from Inversions
“Mocking the wisdom that comes with age is a fit sport only for those who expect never to attain much of it themselves”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Inversions
“[M]y determined and strenuous endeavours to take in absolutely nothing of what I had regarded as entirely the most irrelevant part of my schooling had patently not met with total success”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Inversions
“But there we are. Some things never do make perfect sense. There must be some explanation, and it is perhaps a little like the Doctrine of the Perfect Partner. We must be content to know that she exists, somewhere in the world, and try not to care overmuch that we will probably never meet her.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Inversions
Iain M. Banks
Born place: in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland
Born date February 16, 1954
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“There is a connection to all living things, a vibration of Life. Animals were not given a power of choice. A lion does not try to eat legumes nor an elephant meat. We believe the best way to communicate with nature, God, is through a liaison: the animals.”
― quote from Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived
“I don't think Blanca was worth it, Horatio told him. She wasn't even that good.”
― Richelle Mead, quote from Gameboard of the Gods
“I need her like I need air to breathe.”
― Laurelin Paige, quote from Hudson
“И започнах да пътувам - в пространството и времето - чрез книгите, за да докажа това. Чрез Даниел Дефо се отбих в Лондон, за да направя обиколка с гид из чумавата година. Чух онзи, който бие камбаната, да вика "Изнесете мъртвите си" и подуших дима от подпалените трупове. Все още го усещам в ноздрите си.
Хората измират като плъхове в Лондон, всъщност плъховете също измираха - като хора. След като прекарах два часа там, усетих нужда да сменя пейзажа, при което отидох в Китай и се изкачих по стръмната, тясна пътека сред бамбук и кипариси, за да поседна на прага на малката планинска хижа заедно със стария Ту Фу. Тихо се взирах в млечната мъгла, издигаща се над долината, слушах вятъра в тръстиковите навеси и глухото ехо на камбаните в далечен храм - и двамата бяхме "всеки сам с десет хиляди неща".”
― Sam Savage, quote from Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife
“Miracles, contrary to popular belief, do not just happen. A miracle is the achievement of the impossible, and it is only when we put aside out greed, anger, pride and prejudice so that our minds are open and ready to accept it, that a miracle can occur.”
― Julie Andrews Edwards, quote from The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles
You
Fell
Killer
A Personal Matter
Spring Snow
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