344 Quotes by Richard Powers

Scopophobia hits them all – fear of seeing and being seen. A dog will bite if you stare at it too hard. People will shoot you.

To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one, and to mistake life for something huge with two legs. No: life is mobilized on a vastly larger scale, and the world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people.

Who does the tree-hugger really hug, when he hugs a tree?

A country watches dumbstruck as New England’s priceless chestnuts melt away. The tree of the tanning industry, of railroad ties, train cars, telegraph poles, fuel, fences, houses, barns, fine desks, tables, pianos, crates, paper pulp, and endless free shade and food – the most harvested tree in the country – is vanishing.

Yet this rumble is cartoon thunder.

We are not... wired to see slow, background change, when something bright and colorful is waving in our faces.

In 25 years of writing novels, I’ve never had anything that felt like writer’s block.

A tree is a passage between earth and sky.

We will not sleep, but will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. You’ll see me again. But you’ll never know when. Hear that shifting, ambiguous rhythm, that promise of all things possible, and the ear is on its way to being free.