Perdition awaits at the end of a road constructed entirely from good intentions, the devil emerges from the details and hell abides in the small print.
Iain BanksThey speak very well of you". - "They speak very well of everybody." - "That so bad?" - "Yes. It means you canยดt trust them.
Iain BanksWriting is like everything else: the more you do it the better you get. Don't try to perfect as you go along, just get to the end of the damn thing. Accept imperfections. Get it finished and then you can go back. If you try to polish every sentence there's a chance you'll never get past the first chapter.
Iain Banks...[Changers] were a threat to identity, a challenge to the individualism even of those they were never likely to impersonate. It had nothing to do with souls or physical or spiritual possession; it was, as the Idirans well understood, the behavouristic copying of another which revolted. Individuality, the thing which most humans held more precious than anything else about themselves, was somehow cheapened by the ease with which a Changer could ignore it as a limitation and use it as a disguise.
Iain Banks