Against a Dark Background

Imported from: Clippings/Banks-Against-a-Dark-Background.md

Author: Iain M. Banks Source: Kindle app

Highlights

(expletive deleted) every cause that ends in murder and children crying.


People were always sorry. Sorry they had done what they had done, sorry they were doing what they were doing, sorry they were going to do what they were going to do; but they still did whatever it is. The sorrow never stopped them; it just made them feel better. And so the sorrow never stopped.


law is no more than an abstraction of justice; an expression of a society’s political will and philosophical conceptions. Truth, right and justice are processes, not states. They are dynamic functions


and its renowned organizational prowess was demonstrated in the fact that an empty train had departed just before the passengers got there.


Allow me to attenuate my portentousness for you. [truncated]