16th February: Iain Banks

Iain Banks was born on this date in 1954. He is the Scottish author whose books include The Wasp Factory.

1. As a writer, you get to play, you get alter time, you get to come up with the smart lines and the clever comebacks you wish you'd thought of.
2. In so much of politics you're not allowed to disagree with what's been agreed.
3. I think a lot of people are frightened of technology and frightened of change, and the way to deal with something you're frightened of is to make fun of it. That's why science fiction fans are dismissed as geeks and nerds.
4. The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't. It's incredibly annoying for us scribblers.
5. One should never regret one’s excesses, only one’s failures of nerve.
6. The soup of life is salty enough without adding tears to it.
7. To study religion was merely to know the mind of man, but if one truly wanted to know the mind of God, you must study physics.
8. Half the fun of writing a novel is finding out from other people later on what you actually meant.
9. All you ever were was a little bit of the universe, thinking to itself. Very specific; this bit, here, right now. All the rest was fantasy.
10. While the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.

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Sweet Karma

My latest short story collection: murder and mayhem along with moving statues, Ancient Egyptian magic pebbles, a World War II evacuee's diary and a bathtub full of marshmallows.

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