Richard Powers
Richard Powers
Richard Powersis an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. His novel The Echo Maker won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth18 June 1957
CountryUnited States of America
fall past simple
Music forecasts the past, recalls the future. Now and then the difference falls away, and in one simple gift of circling sound, the ear solves the scrambled cryptogram. One abiding rhythm, present and always, and you're free. But a few measures more, and the cloak of time closes back around you.
realizing disorientation status-quo
The web: yet another total disorientation that becomes status quo without anyone realizing it.
self racism senses
We will live with racism for ever. But senses of self, senses of belonging, senses of us and of others? Those are up for grabs.
mother children spring
Time passes, as the novelist says. The single most useful trick of fiction for our repair and refreshment: the defeat of time. A century of family saga and a ride up an escalator can take the same number of pages. Fiction sets any conversion rate, then changes it in a syllable. The narrator’s mother carries her child up the stairs and the reader follows, for days. But World War I passes in a paragraph. I needed 125 pages to get from Labor Day to Christmas vacation. In six more words, here’s spring.
long viruses bugs
Maybe happiness is like a virus. Maybe it's one of those bugs that sits for a long time, so we don't even know that we are infected.
reading past years
I keep a quotes journal - of every sentence that I've wanted to remember from my reading of the past 30 years.
book character ideas
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.
lines type code
Type a few lines of code, you create an organism.
reading writing eye
The thing that makes reading and writing suspect in the eyes of the market economy is that it's not corrupted.
looks harder
When you're sure of what you're looking at, look harder.
two suitcases fit
Until I was 42, I could fit everything that I owned into two suitcases.
I like to travel and connect.
interest
Everything interests me.
way roles world
We don't consider the roles that we're taking in making the world the way it is.