Quotes from Look to Windward

“Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Look to Windward

“There's an old Sysan saying that the soup of life is salty enough without adding tears to it.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Look to Windward

“Strange that people are happy to adopt epithets they would fight to the death to throw off had they been imposed.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Look to Windward

“He tried to decide if he was really ashamed of being afraid, and decided that he was not. Fear was there for a purpose. It was wired into any creature that had not completely turned its back on its evolutionary inheritance and so remade itself in whatever image it coveted. The more sophisticated you became, the less you relied on fear and pain to keep you alive; you could afford to ignore them because you had other means of coping with the consequences if things went badly.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Look to Windward

“It must be a burden, not even being able to say you were just obeying orders.” “Well, that is always a lie, or a sign you are fighting for an unworthy cause, or still have a very long way to develop civilizationally.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Look to Windward

“We always want more, he thought, we always take our past successes for granted and assume they point the way to future success. But the universe does not have our own best interests at heart, and to assume for a moment that it does, ever did or ever might is to make the most calamitous and hubristic of mistakes.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Look to Windward

“The point, of course, is that the people who spent days and sweated buckets could also have taken an aircraft to the summit if all they’d wanted was to absorb the view. It is the struggle that they crave. The sense of achievement is produced by the route to and from the peak, not by the peak itself. It is just the fold between the pages.” The avatar hesitated. It put its head a little to one side and narrowed its eyes. “How far do I have to take this analogy, Cr. Ziller?”.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Look to Windward

“... like a berserk raptor thrown into a nest of hibernating kittens...”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Look to Windward

“I have seen people who find that grief gives them something they never had before, and no matter how terrible and real their loss they choose to hug that awfulness to them rather than push it away.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Look to Windward

“[I]f I suffered only one fool gladly, I assure you it would be you.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Look to Windward

“Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Look to Windward

“We always want more, he thought, we always take our past successes for granted and assume they but point the way to future triumphs. But the universe does not have our own best interests at heart, and to assume for a moment that it does, ever did or ever might is to make the most calamitous and hubristic of mistakes.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Look to Windward

“The smell was that of a sewer under an abattoir.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Look to Windward

“[T]here can be a form of vanity in grief that is indulged rather than suffered.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Look to Windward

“They spend time. That’s just it. They spend time traveling. The time weighs heavily on them because they lack any context, any valid framework for their lives. They persist in hoping that something they think they’ll find in the place they’re heading for will somehow provide them with a fulfilment they feel certain they deserve and yet have never come close to experiencing.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Look to Windward

“In the old days people died and that was that; you might hope to see them in heaven, but once they were dead they were dead. It was simple, it was definite. Now … ” He shook his head angrily. “Now people die but their Soulkeeper can revive them, or take them to a heaven we know exists, without any need for faith. We have clones, we have regrown bodies—most of me is regrown; I wake up sometimes and think, Am I still me? I know you’re supposed to be your brain, your wits, your thoughts, but I don’t believe it is that simple.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Look to Windward

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Popular quotes

“But don’t sit here and think that you’re cured, because that’s the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard. People who want to get better, they work at it. They don’t lie to themselves and everyone else. They don’t sit on their ass and sink deeper into a pathetic existence while denying anything’s wrong at all. They have balls not bullshit. And I’m pretty much fed up with yours.”
― David Baldacci, quote from Simple Genius

“What does not satisfy when we find it, was not the thing we were desiring.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Pilgrim's Regress

“The speaker catches fire
looking at their faces.
His words
jump down to stand
in listener's places.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from Selected Poems

“He gave her everything. Everything but the promise of a future. And she met his dark strokes with a plunder of her own, holding his gaze, raking his soul of its secrets. She knew just what she meant to him.”
― Monica McCarty, quote from Highlander Unmasked

“If music serves to convey feelings through the interaction of physical gestures and sound, the musician needs his brain state to match the emotional state he is trying to express. Although the studies haven't been performed yet, I'm willing to bet that when B.B. King is playing the blues and when he is feeling the blues, the neural signatures are very similar. (Of course there will be differences, too, and part of the scientific hurdle will be subtracting out the processes involved in issuing motor commands and listening to music, versus just sitting on a chair, head in hands, and feeling down.) And as listeners, there is every reason to believe that some of our brain states will match those of the musicians we are listening to.”
― Daniel J. Levitin, quote from This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

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About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.