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

About the author

Popular quotes

“I was born near Slonim. I saw my home taken over by the Germans, my sister raped by the Russians and later I escaped from a Russian labour camp and was lucky enough to reach America. I'm not mad. This is the only country in the world where you can arrive with nothing and become a millionaire though damned hard work regardless of your background.”
― Jeffrey Archer, quote from Kane and Abel

“When I see you, the World stops. It stops and all that exists for me is you and my eyes staring at you. There's nothing else. No noise, no other people, no thoughts or worries, no yesterday, no tomorrow. The World just stops, and it is a beautiful place, and there is only you.”
― James Frey, quote from A Million Little Pieces

“Life is wasted on the living.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“You know what your problem is, Justina? You're in desperate need of a good shag. "Not that I'm offering you one myself, mind. My days as a whore ended back in the seventeen hundreds."

The gin was abruptly sucked back into my lungs as I gasped. He did not just tell my mother about his former profession; sweet Jesus, let me have heard incorrectly!

I hadn't, and Bones went right on. "... But I have a friend who owes me a favor and he could be persuaded to... Kitten, are you all right?"

I'd stopped breathing as soon as he casually admitted to his prior occupation. Add that to the liquid stuck in my lungs, and no, I wasn't all right.”
― Jeaniene Frost, quote from One Foot in the Grave

“When you don't know everything that you could know, it's a fine time to shut your fucking noisemaker and be polite.”
― Scott Lynch, quote from The Lies of Locke Lamora

Interesting books

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.