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Quotes from The State of the Art — Iain Banks

1954–2013 Scotland

← All quotes by Iain Banks

7 quotes

Reason shapes the future, but superstition infects the present.

The State of the Art (1991)

Beauty is something that disappears when you try to define it.

The State of the Art (1991)

While the forces of repression need to win every time, the progressive elements need only triumph once.

The State of the Art (1991)

I’ve been thinking about the war a lot recently, and I think I’ve decided it’s wrong. We are defeating ourselves in waging it, will destroy ourselves by winning it.

The State of the Art (1991)

There is a saying that we provide the machines with an end, and they provide us with the means.

The State of the Art (1991)

It’s very nearly 1989 but it’s midnight in the Dark Ages just the thickness of a book away, the thickness of a skull away; just the turn of a page away.

The State of the Art (1991)

An excess of boringness does not make a thing interesting except in the driest academic sense. A place is not boring if you have to look really hard for something which is interesting. If there is absolutely nothing interesting about any particular place, then that is a perfectly interesting and quintessentially un-boring place.

The State of the Art (1991)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Iain Banks (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.