Richard Powers Book Quotations

This idea that a book can either be about character and feeling, or about politics and idea, is just a false binary. Ideas are an expression of the feelings and the intense emotions we hold about the world.

I would say the flip side to my fascination with systems is a fascination with components. So many of my books are dialogues between little and big.

Librarian is a service occupation. Gas station attendant of the mind.

A book is still atemporal. It is you, in silence, hearing voices in your head, unfolding at a time that has nothing to do with the timescale of reading. And for the hours that we retreat into this moratorium, with the last form of private and silent human activity that isn't considered pathological, we are outside of time.