Tim Powers

Quotes

1. Your policy here, and in all the Arab states, has been to get out as much oil as you could, before the indigenous peoples looked around and noticed that they were living in the twentieth century.

   p. 184

2. 

   Which perspective is true? he thought. Which do I want to be true?

   p. 285

3. 

   “My wife was a psychiatrist,” remarked Pete, “before she became a bruja.”

   p. 106

4. 

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

   p. 374

5. 

   “Whats o’clock?”

   It wants a quarter to twelve,

   And to-morrow’s doomsday.

   p. 207

6. 

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

   p. 129

7. 

   Say that again after you’ve been in the same spot and acted differently, old buddy. Maybe then I’ll be ashamed.

   p. 169

8. 

   He was dizzy, and it occurred to him that Newton must have been right when he’d said that light consisted of particles, for today he could feel them hitting him.

   p. 51

9. 

   Certainly no valid answer is ever gained by excluding any factors of the problem; that was the Puritans’ error.

   p. 370

10. 

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

    p. 183

11. 

    “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.”

    p. 247

12. 

    The seas and the weathers are what is; your vessels adapt to them or sink.

    p. 9