But it was pointless, it was stupid; he thought about thoughtless things. If I were a seabird . . . but how could you be a seabird? If you were a seabird your brain would be tiny and stupid and you would love half-rotted fish guts and tweaking the eyes out of little grazing animals; you would know no poetry and you could never appreciate flying as fully as the human on the ground yearning to be you. If you wanted to be a seabird you deserved to be one.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the limitations of different perspectives and the value of human experience.
In this quote, Iain Banks explores the idea that yearning for a different existence can be a futile pursuit, as it comes with inherent limitations. The seabird symbolizes a simplistic life focused on basic instincts, while the human perspective allows for deeper appreciation of beauty, complexity, and art, suggesting that one should embrace their own existence rather than idealize another.
In practice
This quote can be used during a discussion about existence and the human condition.
Writing 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.
Our lives are about development, mutation and the possibility of change; that is almost a definition of what life is: change... If you disable change, if you effectively stop time, if you prevent the possibility of the alteration of an individual's circumstances β and that must include at least the possibility that they alter for the worse β then you don't have life after death; you just have death.
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.
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.
You need to read more science fiction. Nobody who reads science fiction comes out with this crap about the end of history
...and I confess that, like a child, I cry. Ah, self-pity; I think we are at our most honest and sincere when we feel sorry for ourselves.
Genetically influenced behavior is not necessarily good and not necessarily unchangeable. Explanations of bad behavior that appeal to genes do not absolve a person any more than do explanations that appeal to upbringing.
It's all now you see: tomorrow began yesterday and yesterday won't be over until tomorrow.
Childhood is over the moment things are no longer astonishing.
It's a mystery. That's the first thing that interests me about the idea of God. If there is one, it's mysterious and powerful and awesome to even consider the concept, and you have to take it seriously.
We are a dreadful species indeed, and deserve whatever it is our techno-baubles do to us.
It is exceedingly difficult to maintain a sense of absence without turning that absence into some kind of presence
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