Tim Powers Quotes

Trusting Merlin is like giving a migrant scorpion a lift inside your hat.

You’re still Brian Duffy. As much as you ever were. But you’re Arthur, too, and that kind of outshines everything else. Brandy and water tastes more like brandy than water, after all.

The wages of courage is death, lad, but it’s the wages of everything else, too.

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.

It struck Duffy that a touch of hysteria had sharpened the good fellowship tonight, as if the night wind whistling under the eaves carried some pollen of impermanence, making everyone nostalgic for things they hadn’t yet lost.

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

It’s too bad she’s the first girl I ever really knew, Thomas thought. I have no way of knowing whether all girls are this way or if she’s unique. I wonder if every guy heaves an instinctive sigh of relief when he’s kissed his girl goodnight, and the door is shut, and he can go relax by himself?

Weird evening," he said. "With this wind and all."
Gladhand nodded. "Several hundred years ago it was considered a valid defense in a murder trial if you could prove the Santa Ana wind was blowing when the murder was committed. The opinion was that the dry, hot wind made everybody so irritable that any murder was almost automatically excusable. Or so I've heard, anyway."
Thomas pondered it. "There might be something to that," he said.
"No," Gladhand said. "There isn't. Start sanctioning heat-of-anger crimes and you've lost the last hold on the set of conventions we call…society, civilization.

What was that building?" Thomas asked, leaning on the coping, and staring out at the conflagration.
"Oh, a city office bombed by radicals," Spencer answered, "or a radicals' den bombed by city officers. I just hope it doesn't spread real far on this wind.

Art, like a lot of things, is a lost art.

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.”

“This fruit syrup stuff is no good for smoking; it’s only fit for impressing ignorant girls.”
Tyler shrugged, as if to say that that was reason enough to smoke it right there.

What would Dad say, Frank wondered briefly, if he knew I was making a living as an art forger? He’d understand. As he once told me, while squinting against the hideous sunlight of a cold morning, “Frankie, if it was easy they'd have got somebody else to do it.”

Work out your own damnation," he said breathlessly, "in fear and trembling.

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