Tim Powers Quotes

This is very pretty," said Elizalde...
"It's morbid," snapped Sullivan. "Burying a bunch of dead bodies, and putting a fancy marker over each one so the survivors will know where to go and cry. What if the markers got rearranged? You'd be weeping over some stranger. Not some stranger, even, some cast-off dead body of a stranger, like a pile of fingernail clippings or old shoes, or the dust from inside an electric razor. What's the difference between coming out here to think about dead Uncle Irving, and thinking about him in your own living room? Okay, here you can sit on the grass and be only six feet above his inert old body. Would it be better if you could dig a hole, and sit only one foot above it?" He was shaking. "Everybody should be cremated, and the ashes should be tossed in the sea with no fanfare at all."
"It's a sign of respect," said Elizalde angrily. "And it's a real, tangible link. Think of the Shroud of Turin! Where would we be if they had cremated Jesus?"
"I don't know—we'd have the Ashtray of Turin.

It’s important to feel good about yourself. This morning I met somebody I really like—me.

In the early eighties, savvy Japanese had been scouring Melrose for old leather jackets and jukeboxes, and nervous tourists would drive by to look at the punks with green mohawks; now the funny hairstyles looked as if they’d been done at the Beverly Center. Like a government-subsidized avant-garde, Sullivan had thought as he’d tooled his old van down the crowded avenue, affluent disenfranchisement is just galvanic twitching in a dead frog’s leg.

Sukie had always said that the Alice books were the Old and New Testaments for ghosts—which Pete had never understood; after all, Lewis Carroll hadn’t been dead yet when he’d written them.

People in 1900 didn’t think that radium could hurt you, just carrying a chip of it in your pocket like a lucky rock, and then one day their legs fell off and they died of cancer. Not believing something is no help if you turn out to be wrong.

He thought about crossing his fingers, but clasped her hand instead.

I’m really willing to try to believe you’re not crazy, but you gotta help me a little, you know?

Gambling was the place where statistics and profound human consequences met most nakedly, after all, and cards, even more than dice or the numbers on a roulette wheel, seemed able to define and perhaps even dictate a player’s...luck.

It wasn’t fair, but fairness was something you had to go get; it wasn’t delivered like the mail.

He tried to put more conviction into his voice than he felt, and he mentally cursed any God that there might be, for having made this coming ordeal not only tremendously difficult and dangerous, but possibly pointless too.

She’s probably only now beginning to be able to think for herself, he thought. And she’ll be hating it. Will she acknowledge the responsibilities that she can now clearly see, or will they be so appalling that she’ll just want to return to the selfless haze?

God help us," said Crawford softly.
"If there is one." Byron grinned. "A whole lot of ghastly things have turned out to be possible, remember.

The landlord crossed himself when they checked in, but an English ten-pound note for a week’s lodging overcame whatever superstitious misgivings the man may have had.

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.

Every ruler wants to maintain the status quo.