Espedair Street Quotes

“There are times when you can't do the sensible thing, when you can't act like a responsible adult at all; you just have to do whatever insane thing comes into your head. When bad people do it they end up murderers, when good people do it they end up heroes, and when the rest of do it we end up looking like total idiots. But when's that ever stopped us?”
― Iain Banks, Espedair Street

“Peddle one of the least harmful drugs humanity's ever discovered, and you get twenty years. Peddle something that kills a hundred thousand a year... and you get a knighthood.”
― Iain Banks, Espedair Street

“He was one of those men ... who know in their hearts that for all their edgy, belligerent hardness they are just unhappy kids, emotional retards.”
― Iain Banks, Espedair Street

“I still don't understand fashion. Why do people dress up in new styles in the first place if they're only going to act all embarrassed and ashamed about them later?”
― Iain Banks, Espedair Street

“The sunset was really over, but a thunderously deep stain of red still lay across the furthest limit of the western sky. I looked out to it for a moment. Skye was somewhere out there, more felt than seen.”
― Iain Banks, Espedair Street

“And even a small amount of talent can go an appallingly long way, these days.”
― Iain Banks, Espedair Street

“There's this sloth in the jungle walking from one tree to another, and it's mugged by a gang of snails, and when the police ask the sloth if it could identify any of its attackers, it says, 'I don't know; it all happened so quickly...”
― Iain Banks, Espedair Street

“Aye,’ McCann said ruefully, ‘if yer rich yer just eccentric; if yer poor yer a nutcase an they stick ye in the bin.”
― Iain Banks, Espedair Street

“... as fur sneak nuclear attacks on anithir country, there was only wan state in history had ever done that, an it wiznae the fuckin Soviet Union.' - McCann”
― Iain Banks, Espedair Street