Matter (Culture, #8)

by Iain M. Banks

I’d welcome that with both arms, both legs and a kiss.

periodicities

decieons

civicides

dubiety.

liabilitous

Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill

the sum of the universe in its entirety, was mostly nothing; average it all out and it made a pretty good vacuum.

centieons

news osmoses. And where news is concerned, the Culture is of a very low pressure.”

contrabandly

Most men – most women, too, no doubt – lived and died under the general weight of the drives and needs, expectations and demands they experienced from within and without, beaten this way and that by longings for sex, love, admiration, comfort, importance and wealth and whatever else was their particular fancy, as well as being at the same time channelled into whatever furrows were deemed appropriate for them by those on high. In life you hoped to do what you could but mostly you did what you were told and that was the end of it.

“The Hundredth Idiot, is a quotation: ‘One hundred idiots make idiotic plans and carry them out. All but one justly fail. The hundredth idiot, whose plan succeeded through pure luck, is immediately convinced he’s a genius.’ It is an old proverb.”

Now We Try It My Way

Very Quiet, what the ship called Ssh mode,

bazonging

nudge-fielded,

“the good ship We Know What’s Good For You”.

We guilt you.

Guilt by association

She wanted to tell him that it was all okay, that there was nothing really to worry about, that the universe was a terrible, utterly uncaring place and then people came along and added suffering and injustice to the mix as well and it was all so much worse than he could imagine and she knew because she had studied it and lived it, even if just a little. You could make it better but it was a messy process and then you just had to try – you were obliged, duty-bound to try – to be sure that you did the right thing.

All our tragedies and triumphs, our lives and deaths, our shames and joys are just stuffing for your emptiness.

You Naughty Monsters.

You’ll Clean That Up Before You Leave,

Schtip

Nothing able to think, nothing able to comprehend culpability, justice or morality could encompass such purposefully invoked savagery without representing the absolute definition of evil. It is that unthinkingness that saves us. And condemns us, too, of course; we are as a result our own moral agents, and there is no escape from that responsibility, no appeal to a higher power that might be said to have artificially constrained or directed us.”

piste

jollily

What is one man’s life if such casual immensity can even exist?

oilily,

systemry?”

silse

Was it more honourable to starve than to steal? Many people would say yes, though rarely those who’d actually experienced an empty belly, or a child whimpering with its own hunger. Was it more honourable to starve than to steal when others had the means to feed you but chose not to, unless you paid with money you did not have? He thought not. By choosing to starve you became your own oppressor, keeping yourself in line, harming yourself for having the temerity to be poor,

Variolous