Iain Banks - Use of Weapons (1990)

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He had to give orders that meant men died, and sometimes sacrifice hundreds, thousands of them, knowingly sending them to their near-certain deaths, just to secure some important position or goal, or protect some vital position. And always, whether they liked it or not, the civilians suffered too; the very people they both claimed to be fighting for made up perhaps the bulk of the casualties in their bloody struggle.
He had tried to stop it, tried to bargain, from the beginning, but neither side wanted peace on anything except its own terms, and he had no real political power, and so had had to fight.

Iain Banks
What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead?

Iain Banks
Most people are not prepared to have their minds changed, 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 realize just that, as they trot out their excuses.

Iain Banks
I'm saying with very few exceptions nothing lasts forever, and among those exceptions, no work or thought of man is numbered.

Iain Banks
In all the human societies we have ever reviewed, in every age and every state, there has seldom if ever been a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots.

Iain Banks
The youth was a cretin, and didn't even realize that he was.
He could think of no more disastrous combination.

Iain Banks
More than anything else now, though, he wanted to save Darckense. He had seen too many dead, dry eyes, too much air-blackened blood, too much fly-blown flesh, to be able to relate such ghastly truths to the nebulous ideas of honor and tradition that people claimed they were fighting for. Only the well-being of one loved person seemed really worth fighting for now; it was all that seemed real, all that could save his sanity.

Iain Banks
I think I know the real reason.
Which is?
Alcohol in the dust clouds. Goddamn stuff is everywhere. Any lousy species ever invents the telescope and the spectroscope and starts looking in between the stars, what do they find? He knocked the glass on the table. Loads of stuff, but much of it alcohol. He drank from the glass. Humanoids are the galaxy's way of trying to get rid of all that alcohol.

Iain Banks
He knew in his heart that there was a relief in not being listened to, sometimes. Power meant responsibility. Advice unacted upon almost always might have been right, and in the working out of whatever plan was followed, there was anyway always blood; better it was on their hands. The good soldier did as he was told, and if he had any sense at all volunteered for nothing, especially promotion.

Iain Banks
What is all your studying worth, all your learning, all your knowledge, if it doesn't lead to wisdom? And what's wisdom but knowing what is right, and what is the right thing to do?

Iain Banks
These people have successfully incorporated a belief in your martial prowess into their religion; how can you deny them?
Believe me, it would be easy.

Iain Banks
He would give up then, and console himself with something she'd said: that you could not love what you fully understood. Love, she maintained, was a process, not a state. Held still, it withered. He wasn't too sure about all that; he seemed to have found a calm clear serenity in himself he hadn't even known was there, thanks to her.

Iain Banks
I just think people overvalue argument because they like to hear themselves talk.

Iain Banks
He suspected the troops felt closer to somebody who spoke a different language but asked them questions than they did to somebody who shared their language and only ever used it to give orders.

Iain Banks
There are no gods, we are told, so I must make my own salvation.

Iain Banks
I'm from out of town, he said breezily. This was true. He'd never been within a hundred light-years of the place.

Iain Banks
What they had talked themselves into, they could be silent out of.

Iain Banks
You're a wicked man.
Thank you. It's taken years of diligent practice.

Iain Banks
Such a stupid act. 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.

Iain Banks
Well, he sighed to no one in particular, and looked up into yet another alien sky. Here we are again.

Iain Banks
The sky was aquamarine, stroked with clouds. She could smell the grass and taste the scent of small, crushed flowers. She looked back up over her forehead at the gray-black wall towering behind her, and wondered if the castle had ever been attacked on days like this. Did the sky seem so limitless, the waters of the straits so fresh and clean, the flowers so bright and fragrant, when men fought and screamed, hacked and staggered and fell and watched their blood mat the grass?
Mists and dusk, rain and lowering cloud seemed the better background; clothes to cover the shame of battle.

Iain Banks
Let's waste a little time, hmm?
A nice euphemism, sir, she mused distantly.
He smiled. Come and help me think of better ones.
She smiled and they both looked at each other.
There was a long pause.

Iain Banks