Quotes from Tim Powers

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.

It's a new world, right enough, a world for the taking, and we're the ones who know how to live in it without having to pretend it's a district of England or France or Spain.

Somebody's killing the moon, the goddess; some woman has apparently taken on the—what would the word be—goddess-hood and somebody's killing her. I think it's too late for her, and I don't know the circumstances, but she's got a child, a little girl. An infant, in fact, to judge by how close Venus was to the moon when we saw it." Here

When the Arabs untied him and carried him aboard the dahabeeyeh, a low, single-masted boat with a little cabin in the back, he was half delirious and muttering, 'Beer... beer...' Fortunately they seemed to recognise the word, and brought him a jug of what was, blessedly and unmistakably, beer.

The Flamingo, as Siegel named his hotel, was a castle in the wasteland with a lot of tamed water nearby. And

Is this Christian charity as it's practiced in Bern?" He stood up, rapping his head against the low ceiling. "The Church has become a more … exclusive club since the founder's day, it's clear. No doubt the Devil is more hospitable.

This baby is a daughter of the goddess, and so she's a T-H-R-E-A-T to them, you bet. A big threat. She could bounce the King, if she grows up, which…certain persons…would like her not to do. And there's other people who want her to grow up but would want to, what, be her manager, you know? Boss her, use her. Climb into the tower by means of her Rapunzel hair, yes, sir. Right into that tower." Scott

Stop to mourn for every good man that's died for us and you'd never get from bed to the chamber-pot.

No man can step into the same river twice, for the second time it's not the same river, and he's not the same man." —Heraclitus

The long gray two-story box was the newest structure on the property, having been built in the 1970s. The buildings up the hill had accumulated one by one since the 1920s, most of them incorporating bits salvaged from various torn-down hotels and movie sets. Their aunt Amity, affluent from the sales of her series of popular novels, had added to the architectural clutter after

Byron; and, realistically, quite a number of those infants will die without my care, and Josephine is hardly a creature with potential, hardly anybody's idea of a tabula rasa, a blank slate—hell, she's a slate that's had bad math scrawled on it and then been waxed so that nothing can ever be written on it again. I've treated sheep that had more of a right to live.

We need a pretty substantial favor." She pointed at Crawford and herself. "He and I want to get married. Uh, Father Cyprian, this is John Crawford, and this is our daughter, Johanna." The priest nodded sympathetically. "One does tend to keep putting these things off, doesn't one?

There's a way out of every disaster except your last one.

but though desert foxes were considered lawful to eat, bin Jalawi told him that it would be madness to kill one in the region around Wabar. "Here they might be the old citizens," bin Jalawi said. "'Honor him who has been great and is fallen, and him who has been rich and is now poor.

Shandy frowned, and looked past the flickering fire to the jungle. "I won't insult you by being less than frank. This is a new world, and these pirates live much more intimately with it than the Europeans in Kingston and Cartagena and Port-au-Prince, who try to transplant as much of the Old World as they can. If you believe what's in the Old Testament you believe some weird things…and you shouldn't be too quick to dictate what is and isn't possible.

Jacky couldn't help barking out one syllable of a laugh. "Not noddle, dottle. The ash from a clay pipe of his." She pointed at the glass vial. "Ceneromancy, it's called. Magic you do with ashes. It's kept him near me, since…since he was killed.

Mothertongue frowned at Duffy's tone. "There are matters awaiting my decisions," he admitted. "But you're not to give these men alcohol; they're clean-living Christians Ã¢â'¬Â¦ underneath it all." "Of course they are." A cask of beer was carried out a minute or so after Mothertongue's exit, and Duffy filled twenty-two mugs. "Drink up, now, you clean-living Christians," he told the northmen, unnecessarily.

The poem was called "Goblin Market," and the book whose proof pages were on the desk was titled Goblin Market and Other Poems. Christina

Write your letter, I'll take it – and I'll return with this atheist's jawbone as quickly as I'm able.

C'etait impossible de savoir ci c' etait le froid ou la faim.

Une de ses mains, ouverte, se balançait, paume en l'air, paume en bas, dans un curieux geste fataliste. Ça va et ça vient, semblait dire cette main, le bon et le mauvais, la vie et la mort, la joie et l'horreur, il ne faut s'étonner de rien.

Mais tu as raison. Dès que j'aurai un vaisseau capable de prendre le large, je trouverai, je sauverai et - s'il en est encore temps - j'épouserai la seule femme qui a, pour moi, à la fois un corps et un visage, et avec qui je n'ai pas besoin de renoncer aux miens.

Every thinking human is a turbulent little pocket of supernatural freedom-from-causality, working against the constant resistance of an otherwise mathematically determinist world.

To Jacky and Harriet he explained, "Ghosts from upriver get snagged here, God knows why, like leaves caught by a drain, and when a whole lot of 'em clump up, they make a sort of man, something very like a man, good enough to talk and naturally good at handling ghosts. It's never what you'd call a particular person—it's Nobody, in that way. And it lives on the smell of fresh blood, like they say jungle plants live on just smells in the air.