Quotes by Iain Banks

About Iain Banks:

Iain Banks was a Scottish author. He wrote mainstream fiction under the name Iain Banks, and science fiction as Iain M. Banks, including the initial of his adopted middle name Menzies (i/?m???z/).
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I still have some of my old University essays, and I do still have my drawing book from primary year seven.

Iain Banks

Smell is a very animal thing, almost reptilian, where the more cerebral things like reading less so.

Iain Banks

I remember being shocked when I discovered some of my school pals didn't have books in their homes. I thought it was like not having oxygen, or hot water.

Iain Banks

I'm an only child so am happy with my own company and I don't really get lonely.

Iain Banks

'Dead Air' is full of rants; it's a rant-based book. Yes, it's self-indulgence. I plead guilty; mea culpa.

Iain Banks

There is a quite a lot of effort involved but I find action sequences some of the quickest to write and the most fun.

Iain Banks

Even in my side of the world, I've been in publishing for what, 25 or 26 years, and it's gone from being a gentlemen's club to being a few big players, and it's very corporatised.

Iain Banks

I don't really do themes. I might accidentally, but themes are an emergent phenomena of the writing of the book, of just trying to get a story out there.

Iain Banks

You get so caught up in what you're writing - action sequences tend to do that more than anything else because you're living it, and feeling for your characters.

Iain Banks

I don't think you really belong here, Aviger." Xoxarle nodded wisely, slowly. Aviger shrugged, and did not raise his eyes. "I don't think any of us do." "The brave belong where they decide." Some harshness entered the Idiran's voice.

Iain Banks

Yes of course I know it's all a dream. Isn't everything?

Iain Banks

That would require faith. I do not beliebe in faith. I believe it exists but I do not believe it works. I don't know what the rules are here; I can't risk throwing everything away on a long shot.

Iain Banks

To want more was not just childish, but cowardly, and somehow constpatory too. Death was change; it led to new chances, new vacancies, new niches and opportunities; it was not all loss.

Iain Banks

There are no gods, we are told, so I must make my own salvation.

Iain Banks

You need to read more science fiction. Nobody who reads science fiction comes out with this crap about the end of history

Iain Banks

It's like a sealed, forgotten chamber in me; I shan't feel complete until I've discovered its entrance.' 'Sounds like a tomb. Aren't you afraid of what you'll find in there?' 'It's a library; only the stupid and the evil are afraid of those.

Iain Banks

In the end, he had to admit, he didn't really understand her. He didn't understand women. He didn't understand men. He didn't even understand children very well. All he really understood, he thought, was himself and the rest of the universe. Neither ...

Iain Banks

There has seldom if ever a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this simple fact; there is never a scarcity of idio...

Iain Banks

Everything about us, everything around us, everything we know and can know of is composed ultimately of patterns of nothing; that’s the bottom line, the final truth. So where we find we have any control over those patterns, why not make the most el...

Iain Banks

Anyway, you can't leave her like that. You can't do that to the woman. She doesn't deserve it; nobody does. You don't belong to her and she doesn't belong to you, but you're both part of each other; if she got up and left now and walked away and you ...

Iain Banks

Half the fun of writing a novel is finding out from other people later on what you actually meant.

Iain Banks

Author Bio

  • NameIain Banks
  • DescriptionScottish writer
  • AliasesIain M. Banks
  • BornFebruary 16, 1954
  • DiedJune 9, 2013
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionScience Fiction Writer; Novelist