344 Quotes by Richard Powers

When is the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago.

For there is hope of a tree, if it goes down, that it will sprout again, and that its tender branches will not cease. Though the root grows old in the earth, and the stock dies in the ground, at the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs. But man, man wastes away and dies and gives up the ghost, and where is he?

Be grateful for anything that still cuts. Dissonance is a beauty that familiarity hasn’t destroyed yet.

What we want, finally, from friends, is that they have no more clue than we do.

Love is a tree with branches in forever with roots in eternity and a trunk nowhere at all.

We’re shaped to think the things we want will make us happy. But shaped to take only the briefest thrill in getting. Wanting is what having wants to recover.

I don’t know any sad songs. Except for the funny ones.

She marvels again at how the planet’s supreme intelligence could discover calculus and the universal laws of gravitation before anyone knew what a flower was for.

But memory will forever replay this day in black and white, the slow voice-over pan of Movietone.