Iain Banks Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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At one level, an award is an endorsement, a confirmation, but I always find myself looking askance at awards and good reviews, as though another Garry Disher had earned them.
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Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
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Beginning with the No Child Left Behind law and continuing today with Race to the Top, the federal emphasis on standardized assessments has become so excessive that it has modified state and district behavior in troubling ways.
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Only those ignorant of what poetry means will ask the question: what is it good for?
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People are not perfect... very often the relationships that are strongest are those where people have worked through big crises, but they've had to work through them. So the challenge to us is to work through that.
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It is ingrained in all living creatures, first of all, to preserve their own safety, to guard against what is harmful, to strive for what is advantageous.
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The power chords in 'Come Sail Away' were super heavy to me as a kid. Metal? No. Hard rock? At times, for sure.
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If we want to impact hundreds - or millions - of people, we have to do things differently. If we look at the problem as an infrastructural problem, we cannot make an impact because it requires a lot of effort. But when we convert this problem into a knowledge problem, suddenly the problem is manageable.
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I sort of understood that when I first started: that you shouldn't repeat a success. Very often you're going to, and maybe the first time you do, it works. And you love it. But then you're trapped.
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I never felt like I had a mother.
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If people don't like me for whatever I do, for being me, then that's too bad. I don't want to change to be something that I'm not for other people to like me.
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Patients know in a heartbeat if they're getting a clumsy exam.
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I definitely got to a point where I realize how unusual it is to be able to play large, sold-out shows 30 years into a rock and roll career. I don't take it for granted.
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Ultimately, I've learned to pride myself on being quirky. I very much adore people who are outcasts, and I've always loved to be around interesting, circus-type people.
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I was 13 - 14 when I first tasted stardom. In the summer holidays, my dad made me act in these films that went on to become superhits. I became a child star.
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A lot of my emotional issues come from dealing with the opposite sex. I've come to terms with the fact that I'll be retired before I can finally enter into a healthy relationship.
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My mother lived till she was 95 and never had a line on her face or a frown line. She was beautiful.
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Back when I was a senior in high school in Haughton, LA, I had a chance to go to LSU. Everyone I grew up with adored LSU, including my mom. But I chose to come to Mississippi State because I wanted to start a new tradition instead of perpetuating an established one.
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No one - absolutely no one - is above the law.
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The thinking of the world leads us to think shallowly and act too quickly.
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Why don't men like to stop and ask directions? This question, which I first addressed in my 1990 book 'You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation', garnered perhaps the most attention of any issue or insight in that book.
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When it's over it's over. No questions, no tears, no farewell kisses.
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It's been a long time since I've written old-fashioned sword and sorcery; I'm hoping it's like riding a bicycle.
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Something in your voice tells me we approach the question of remuneration.
