I think we need politicians; we need people who want to serve.

Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.

A lot of what the 'Culture' is about is a reaction to all the science fiction I was reading in my very early teens.

I still have some of my old University essays, and I do still have my drawing book from primary year seven.

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.

You have to have something worth saying and then the ability to say it- writing's a double skill, really.

It's a library, only the stupid or the evil are afraid of those