Tim Powers

Tim Powers (born 29 February 1952) is an American science fiction and fantasy author.

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The Anubis Gates (1983)

All page numbers from the trade paperback edition published in 1997 by Ace Books

• When they’d gone the old man turned around to watch the sun’s slow descent. The Boat of Millions of Years, he thought; the boat of the dying sungod Ra, tacking down the western sky to the source of the dark river that runs through the underworld from west to east, through the twelve hours of the night, at the far eastern end of which the boat will tomorrow reappear, bearing a once again youthful, newly reignited sun.
  Or, he thought bitterly, removed from us by a distance the universe shouldn’t even be able to encompass, it’s a vast motionless globe of burning gas, around which this little ball of a planet rolls like a pellet of dung propelled by a kephera beetle. Take your pick, he told himself as he started slowly down the hill...But be willing to die for your choice.
  • Chapter 1 (pp. 3-4)

• Say that again after you’ve been in the same spot and acted differently, old buddy. Maybe then I’ll be ashamed.
  • Chapter 7 (pp. 169-170)

• 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.
  • Chapter 14 (p. 341)

• “You ever notice, Joe,” he asked, mechanically picking up the mug, “that it always takes a little more trouble to get something than the thing was really worth?”
  Joe considered it. “Better than taking a lot of trouble and getting nothing.”
  Dundee sipped the coffee. He didn’t seem to have heard Joe. “There’s so much weariness and fatigue in it all. For every action there is an equal...stupefaction. No, that might be bearable—it’s greater than the action.”
  • Chapter 14 (p. 342)

• Certainly no valid answer is ever gained by excluding any factors of the problem; that was the Puritans’ error.
  • Chapter 15 (p. 370)

On Stranger Tides (1987)

All page numbers from the mass market paperback edition published in 2011 by Harper

• The seas and the weathers are what is; your vessels adapt to them or sink.
  • Chapter 1 (p. 9, repeated on p. 53)

• “Whats o’clock?”
  It wants a quarter to twelve,
  And to-morrow's doomsday.
  • Chapter 19 (p. 207, quoting T. L. Beddoes)

Last Call (1992)

All page numbers from the trade paperback edition published in 2003 by Perennial

• It wasn’t fair, but fairness was something you had to go get; it wasn’t delivered like the mail.
  • Chapter 8 (p. 77)

• Gambling was the place where statistics and profound human consequences met most nakedly, after all, and cards, even more than dice or the numbers on a roulette wheel, seemed able to define and perhaps even dictate a player’s...luck.
  • Chapter 8 (p. 79)

• I'm really willing to try to believe you're not crazy, but you gotta help me a little, you know?
  • Chapter 37 (p. 374)

• He thought about crossing his fingers, but clasped her hand instead.
  • Epilogue (p. 535)