Tim Powers Quotes

Processions of priests and religiosi have been for several days past praying for rain; but the gods are either angry, or nature is too powerful.

How does my offer sound?
Rivas took a long thoughtful sip. "Let's see," he said finally. "It sounds insincere, impossible, and definitely, absolutely unattractive.

There's something you should know about me."
"What's that?"
"I don't know, but you should know it.

When they’d gone the old man turned around to watch the sun’s slow descent. The Boat of Millions of Years, he thought; the boat of the dying sungod Ra, tacking down the western sky to the source of the dark river that runs through the underworld from west to east, through the twelve hours of the night, at the far eastern end of which the boat will tomorrow reappear, bearing a once again youthful, newly reignited sun.
Or, he thought bitterly, removed from us by a distance the universe shouldn’t even be able to encompass, it’s a vast motionless globe of burning gas, around which this little ball of a planet rolls like a pellet of dung propelled by a kephera beetle. Take your pick, he told himself as he started slowly down the hill...But be willing to die for your choice.

Gladhand sipped his whiskey. “Bourbon renewal, I called this,” he said, waving his glass. “One sip and the whole neighborhood looks better.”

Some people, he thought, simply have no will to survive—they’re walking hors d’oeuvres waiting for someone who can spare the time to devour them.

Guesses based on guesses are of no value.

He felt as if someone far away below in the darkness was chipping away at the pillars of his mind, and the steady crack...crack...crack of it was the only sound in the universe.

When the story was finished, Orcrist shook his head wonderingly.
“The Fates must have something planned for you, Frank.”
“I hope it’s something quiet.”

We should all be getting insanity danger pay.

The church has become a more...exclusive club since the founder’s day, it’s clear. No doubt the Devil is more hospitable.

After a few seconds, he said, “You’re devout, aren’t you? Some species of Christian, I imagine?”
She smiled faintly. “Yes.”
“I would say that was a mark against your intelligence, but since you’re both nice girls, I won’t say it. But you assume a sequel to this life, one in which noble sacrifices are rewarded, or at least noted. I’m convinced that no note is taken at all, and that, as far as any one of us is concerned, the universe comes to an end at the moment of his death.”

So what do you, you know, do," she asked, "in Barstow?" Her voice was resolutely light. "Beside talk to ghosts?

He remembered his dismay at finding himself committed to a hand of cards without having honestly looked at the stakes, fourteen years ago. Had he been doing it again? But if the stakes were too frightening to consider, and the game was already lost, what value could there be in clear comprehension?

How old are you, Brian? You ought to know by now that something always breaks up love affairs unless both parties are willing to compromise themselves. And that compromising is harder to do the older and less flexible and more independent you are. It just isn't in you, Brian. You could no more get married now than you could become a priest, or a sculptor, or a greengrocer."
Duffy opened his mouth to voice angry denials, then one corner turned up and he closed it. "Damn you," he said wryly. "Then why do I want to, half the time?"
Aurelianus shrugged. "It's the nature of the species. There's a part of a man's mind that can only relax and go to sleep when he's with a woman, and that part gets tired of always being tensely awake. It gives orders in so loud a voice that it often drowns out the other components. But when the loud one is asleep at last, the others regain control and chart a new course." He grinned. "No equilibrium is possible. If you don't want to put up with the constant seesawing, you must either starve the logical components or bind, gag and lock away in a cellar that one insistent one."
Duffy grimaced and drank some more brandy. "I'm used to the rocking, and I was never one to get motion-sick," he said. "I'll stay on the seesaw."
Aurelianus bowed. "You have that option, sir.