“All our lives are symbols. Everything we do is part of a pattern we have at least some say in. The strong make their own patterns and influence other people's, the weak have their courses mapped out for them. The weak and the unlucky, and the stupid.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“Sometimes the thoughts and feelings I had didn't really agree with each other, so I decided I must be lots of different people inside my brain.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“Looking at me, you'd never guess I'd killed three people. It isn't fair.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“Often I've thought of myself as a state; a country or, at the very least, a city. It used to seem to me that the different ways I felt sometimes about ideas, courses of action and so on were like the differing political moods that countries go through. It has always seemed to me that people vote in a new government not because they actually agree with their politics but just because they want a change. Somehow they think that things will be better under the new lot. Well, people are stupid, but it all seems to have more to do with mood, caprice and atmosphere than carefully thought-out arguments. I can feel the same sort of thing going on in my head. Sometimes the thoughts and feelings I had didn't really agree with each other, so I decided I must be lots of different people inside my brain.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“I'm too drunk to recall much of what I've said. Which, come to think of it, is probably just as well, judging by the way people who are normally quite sensible dissolve into gibbering, rude, opinionated and bombastic idiots once the alcohol molecules in their bloom-stream outnumber the neutrons, or whatever. Luckily, one only notices this if one stays sober oneself, so the solution is as pleasant (at the time, at least) as it is obvious.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“Maybe he's up to something, maybe he'ś not really crazy after all. Perhaps he just got fed up acting normal and decided to act crazy instead, and they locked him up because he went too far.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“My greatest enemies are Women and the Sea. These things I hate. Women because they are weak and stupid and live in the shadow of men and are nothing compared to them, and the Sea because it has always frustrated me, destroying what I have built, washing away what I have left, wiping clean the marks I have made.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“He hit and fatally injured my innocent and unfortunate uncle whose muttered last words in hospital, before his coma became a full stop, were: 'My God, the buggers've learned to fly...”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“My enemy is twice dead, and I still have him.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“I killed little Esmerelda because I felt I owed it to myself and to the world in general. I had, after all, accounted for two male children and thus done womankind something of a statistical favour. If I really had the courage of my convictions, I reasoned, I ought to redress the balance at least slightly. My cousin was simply the easiest and most obvious target.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“I held my crotch, closed my eyes and repeated my secret catechism.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. That's my score to date. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“It was just a stage I was going through.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“It made me feel good to know that I could see him and he couldn't see me, and that I was aware and fully conscious and he wasn't”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“Or maybe they're the only sane ones. After all, they're the ones with all the power and riches. They're the ones who get everybody else to do what they want them to do, like die for them and work for them and get them into power and protect them and pay taxes and buy them toys, and they're the ones who'll survive another big war, in their bunkers and tunnels. So, given things being the way they are, who's to say they're the loonies because they don't do things the way Joe Punter thinks they ought to be done? If they thought the same way as Joe Punter, they'd be Joe Punter, and somebody else would be having all the fun.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“I am not answering these questions anymore," I said to him as I took my plate to the sink. "We should have gone metric years ago."
Iain Banks”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“Each of us, in our own personal Factory, may believe we have stumbled down one corridor, and that our fate is sealed and certain (dream or nightmare, humdrum or bizarre, good or bad), but a word, a glance, a slip - anything can change that, alter it entirely, and our marble hall becomes a gutter, or our rat-maze a golden path. Our
destination is the same in the end, but our journey - part chosen, part determined- is
different for us all, and changes even as we live and grow. I thought one door had snicked shut behind me years ago; in fact I was still crawling about the face. Now the door closes, and my journey begins.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“I switched the light out again. The room was totally dark, not even the starlight showing while my eyes adjusted. Perhaps I would ask for one of those LED alarm radios, though I’m very fond of my old brass alarm clock. Once I tied a wasp tot the striking-surface of each of the copper-coloured bells on top, where the little hammer would hit them in the morning when the alarm went off.
I always wake up before the alarm goes, so I got to watch.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“even though he is mad and I am sane.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“Poor Eric came home to see his brother, only to find (Zap!Pow!Dams burst!Bombs go off!Wasps fry:ttssss!) he's got a sister.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“What height is this table?' he said suddenly, just as I was about to go to the bread bin for a slice to wipe my plate with. I turned round and looked at him, wondering why he was bothering with such an easy question.
'Thirty inches,' I told him, and took a crust from the bin.
'Wrong,' he said with an eager grin. 'Two foot six.'
I shook my head at him, scowling, and wiped the brown rim of soup from the inside of my plate. There was a time when I was genuinely afraid of these idiotic questions, but now, apart from the fact that I must know the height, length, breadth, area and volume of just about every part of the house and everything in it, I can see my father's obsession for what it is. It gets embarrassing at times when there are guests in the house, even if they are family and ought to know what to expect. They'll be sitting there, probably in the lounge, wondering whether Father's going to feed them anything or just give an impromptu lecture on cancer of the colon or tapeworms, when he'll sidle up to somebody, look round to make sure everybody's watching, then in a conspiratorial stage-whisper say: 'See that door over there? It's eighty-five inches, corner to corner. ' Then he'll wink and walk off, or slide over on his seat, looking nonchalant.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“There was a layer of grey-blue smoke in the room at about shoulder level, and a big wave in it, probably produced by me as I came in through the double doors of the back porch. The wave rose slowly between us while my father stared at me.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“something very unlikely happened which by sheer chance mattered more to him than anybody else it could have happened to.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“The madder people. A lot of them seem to be leaders of countries or religions or armies. The real loonies.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“Веет дремотой и покоем, и тебе уютно, как большому сонному коту, обвившемуся хвостом.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
“I’m doing fine. I eat dogs! Heh heh heh!’ I”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Wasp Factory
Iain Banks
Born place: in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland
Born date February 16, 1954
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“Learning has to come from doing, not intellectualizing.”
― Derrick Jensen, quote from The Culture of Make Believe
“Our sense of well-being depends to some extent on others regarding us as a You; our yearning for connection is a primal human need, minimally for a cushion for survival. Today the neural echo of that need heightens our sensitivity to the difference between It and You—and makes us feel social rejection as deeply as physical pain.”
― Daniel Goleman, quote from Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships
“his manner had the heavy ease of a politician, poised between bullying and flattery.”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Chill
“When I was in my teens, I made an appraisal of how comfortable my life could turn out when I became the age I am now. Because of a mechanical failure, the prediction was inexact.”
― Arthur Nersesian, quote from The Fuck-Up
“Quanto ad adottare le soluzioni offerte dallo Stato per portare rimedio al male - io, quelle soluzioni, non le conosco: richiedono troppo tempo e un uomo morirebbe prima di riuscire a metterle in atto. Ho altre cose cui badare. Venni al mondo non principalmente per trasformarlo in un luogo buono dove vivere ma per vivervi, buono o cattivo che fosse. Un uomo non deve fare tutto, ma qualche cosa; e poiché tutto non lo può fare, non è necessario che faccia qualcosa di sbagliato.”
― Henry David Thoreau, quote from Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
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