Use of Weapons (Culture, #3)

by Iain M. Banks

with very few exceptions nothing lasts forever, and amongst those exceptions, no work or thought of man is numbered.

Love, she maintained, was a process; not a state. Held still, it withered.

Sometimes, heroics revolted him; they seemed like an insult to the soldier who weighed the risks of the situation and made calm, cunning decisions based on experience and imagination; the sort of unshowy soldiering that didn’t win medals but wars.

‘Most people are not prepared to have their minds changed,’ he said. ‘And I think they know in their hearts that other people are just the same, and one of the reasons people become angry when they argue is that they realise just that, as they trot out their excuses.’