Iain Banks

“It was the day my grandmother exploded.”

“The past was a lie, the future a joke. The only reality was here and now.”

“Ships are friends. You can't have too many friends.”

“Ideas are cheap. A dime a dozen, as they say. It's the implementation that's important! The trick isn't just to have a brilliant idea, it's to find the brilliance in the implementation.”

“People are stupid. They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true.”

“What is the point of having a civilisation, if you do not try to export it?”

“The human mind is a horror story.”

“Basically, I'm a libertarian, and I'm a socialist. They're not mutually exclusive. They're both about empowering individuals.”

“The problem with being a god is that you have no one to pray to.”

“Most people are not particularly good at anything.”

“The point, of course, is that science is not a matter of belief, but of evidence.”

“What matters is not what you are, but what you do.”

“Your brain is not your friend.”

“All our lives are symbols. Everything we do is part of a pattern we have at least some say in.”

“Money is a sign of poverty.”

“No, the secret is that there's no secret. It's just doing it.”

“Like most people who have been to university and have read a few books, I am a confirmed atheist.”

“Death is the star by which we plot our course.”

“Embarrassment, guilt, shame – they’re all forms of fear.”

“The trouble with the civilized world is that it will always be outnumbered and outfought by the barbarians.”