The Player of Games (Culture, #2)

by Iain M. Banks

He turned them all down. It gave him a rather pleasant feeling.

he found himself reading and re-reading the same piece or page or screen, time and time again, trying hard to take it in but finding his thoughts constantly veering away from the words and diagrams and illustrations in front of him, refusing to absorb anything, going back time and time again to the same treadmill, the same looping, tail-swallowing, eternally pointless round of questioning and regret.

In other words, the precise translation depends on whether your own civilization (for let us err on the side of terminological generosity) is male or female dominated.

He always meant to write to—or record something for—Chamlis or Yay or any of the other people back at Chiark who’d sent messages, but the time never seemed quite right, and the longer he delayed the harder the task became.

Common misconception that; that fun is relaxing. If it is, you’re not doing it right.

It was not so difficult to understand the warped view the Azadians had of what they called “human nature”—the phrase they used whenever they had to justify something inhuman and unnatural

They were like a pair of secret lovers, secure and safe in their huge nest of a room, locked together before hundreds of people who looked on and who saw but who could not read and who would never guess what it was they were witnessing.