218 Quotes by Iain Banks

It’s a library, only the stupid or the evil are afraid of those.

He was one of those men... who know in their hearts that for all their edgy, belligerent hardness they are just unhappy kids, emotional retards.

Political correctness is what right-wing bigots call what everybody else calls being polite.

He could describe walking towards the Taj Mahal – ho-hum, thinks the reader, immediately in the realm of the tacky postcard – and still give you a wholly fresh impression of the exact scale and actual presence of that white tomb; delicate but powerful, compact and yet boundlessly imposing. Epic grace. With those two words he encapsulated it, and you knew exactly what he meant.

It occurred to me then, as it has before, that that is what men are really for. Both sexes can do one thing specially well; women can give birth and men can kill.

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

I’m a devoted husband. That must strike you as totally deviant.

I’m doing fine. I eat dogs! Heh heh heh!’ I.

Mr Blawke always reminded me of a heron; I’m not sure why. Something to do with a sense of rapacious stillness, perhaps, and also the aura of one who knows time is on his side.