Iain Banks

I deliberately keep myself apart from a lot of stuff; I don't Tweet, I don't do Facebook, I don't blog, and that's largely because I spend my working life staring at a screen and hitting a keyboard, I am trying to cut down on that, not increase it.

I like people who don't accept boundaries. Like Florence Nightingale. And Napoleon or Louis XIV, though I'm not sure how much I'd have liked to meet them. I admire people who aren't circumscribed by circumstance.

I want to tell mayors, county chiefs and heads of big companies: don't just chase GDP growth; don't chase the biggest profits at the expense of our children and grandchildren and at the cost of sacrificing our ecological environment.