Tim Powers

Every ruler wants to maintain the status quo.

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?

I’ve learned that having a lot of money is more fun than not having a lot of money, and that once you’ve got it, it tends to grow all by itself, like a fire.

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

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

“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.”