344 Quotes by Richard Powers

The tree is saying things, in words before words. It says: Sun and water are questions endlessly worth answering. It says: A good answer must be reinvented many times, from scratch.

Sun and water are questions endlessly worth answering.

It’s a funny thing about capitalism: money you lose by slowing down is always more important than money you’ve already made.

But people have no idea what time is. They think it’s a line, spinning out from three seconds behind them, then vanishing just as fast into the three seconds of fog just ahead. They can’t see that time is one spreading ring wrapped around another, outward and outward until the thinnest skin of Now depends for its being on the enormous mass of everything that has already died.

We’re all trapped in the bodies of sly, social-climbing opportunists shaped to survive the savanna by policing each other.

Dad, I would very much like to plunge off the edge of commonsense existence, at your expense, and become certifiably unemployable.

We don’t make reality. We evade it. By looting natural capital and hiding the costs. But the bill is coming, and we won’t be able to pay.

There’s a Chinese saying. ‘When is the best time to plan a tree? Twenty years ago.

If you want a person to help you, convince them that they’ve already helped you beyond saying. People will work hard to protect their legacy.