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Iain Banks

Iain Banks Quotes

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Famous Iain Banks Quotes

“Empires are synonymous with centralized if occasionally schismatized hierarchical power structures in which influence is restricted to an economically privileged class retaining its advantages through usually a judicious use of oppression and skilled manipulation of both the society's information dissemination systems and its lesser as a rule nominally independent power systems. In short, it's all about dominance.”

IfsUseClassInfluenceInformationAdvantageIndependentStructureOppressionEmpiresManipulationPrivilegedDominanceRetainingDissemination
Book:The Player Of Games: A Culture Novel
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“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.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWayWellsSaidJudgingSolutionsOneselfObviousAlcoholDrunkIdiotStreamsPleasantSensibleRecallsRudeSoberMoleculesOpinionatedNeutronsBombastic
Author:Iain Banks
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“Our lives are about development, mutation and the possibility of change; that is almost a definition of what life is: change... If you disable change, if you effectively stop time, if you prevent the possibility of the alteration of an individual's circumstances — and that must include at least the possibility that they alter for the worse — then you don't have life after death; you just have death.”

IfsLife IsIndividualOur LivesPossibilityDevelopmentCircumstancesDefinitionsAfter DeathLife After DeathAlterationsMutationStop TimePossibility Of Change
Book:Look To Windward
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“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 never saw each other again for the rest of your lives, and you lived an ordinary waking life for another fifty years, even so on your deathbed you would still know she was part of you.”

IfsKnowsYearsDoeStillsLeftSawsOrdinaryDeserveFiftyWakingRest Of Your LifeDeathbedWaking Life
Book:The bridge
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“But it was pointless, it was stupid; he thought about thoughtless things. If I were a seabird . . . but how could you be a seabird? If you were a seabird your brain would be tiny and stupid and you would love half-rotted fish guts and tweaking the eyes out of little grazing animals; you would know no poetry and you could never appreciate flying as fully as the human on the ground yearning to be you. If you wanted to be a seabird you deserved to be one.”

IfsKnowsHumansLittlesWould BeEyeWantedAnimalBrainHalfStupidAppreciateFishesTinyFlyingGutsBe YouYearningPointlessGrazing
Author:Iain Banks
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