Iain Banks Quotes

Author Image

Iain Banks

Profession : Writer

Birth : February 16, 1954

Torture is such a slippery slope; as soon as you allow a society or any legal system to do that, almost instantly you get a situation where people are being tortured for very trivial reasons.

Iain Banks

Technology determines the possibilities of society. It doesn't matter whether you start out from a fascist state or a communist state or a free-market state.

Iain Banks

Science fiction has its own history, its own legacy of what's been done, what's been superseded, what's so much part of the furniture it's practically part of the fabric now, what's become no more than a joke... and so on. It's just plain foolish, as well as comically arrogant, to ignore all this, to fail to do the most basic research.

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've always loved Scotland, and I'm not a huge fan of big cities, to be honest. I like them to dip into for a bit, but I'm not sure I would want to live in one again.

Iain Banks

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

Iain Banks

I think we need politicians; we need people who want to serve.

Iain Banks

I deliberately keep myself apart from a lot of stuff; I don't Tweet, I don't do Facebook, I don't blog, and that's largely because I spend my working life staring at a screen and hitting a keyboard, I am trying to cut down on that, not increase it.

Iain Banks

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

Iain Banks

I wouldn't like to be a character in one of my books!

Iain Banks

My point has always been that, ever since the Industrial Revolution, science fiction has been the most important genre there is.

Iain Banks

A lot of what the 'Culture' is about is a reaction to all the science fiction I was reading in my very early teens.

Iain Banks

I love writing and can't imagine not being able to do it. I want an easy life and if it had been difficult I wouldn't be doing it. I do admire writers who do it even though it costs them.

Iain Banks

Most mainstream male fiction is littered with heroines, and female characters are basically so great, you want to fall in love with them.

Iain Banks

You have to have something worth saying and then the ability to say it- writing's a double skill, really.

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

Science fiction is trying to find alternative ways of looking at realities.

Iain Banks

As long as a film stays unmade, the book is entirely yours, it belongs to the writer. As soon as you make it into a film, suddenly more people see it than have ever read the book.

Iain Banks

I still find it hard to understand that anyone could argue that you can't have machines that exhibit consciousness.

Iain Banks

I think the future stopped looking American when you think back to Blade Runner and Neuromancer, when it started to look more Japanese.

Iain Banks