"Librarian is a service occupation. Gas station attendant of the mind."
— Richard Powers

"Evil is the refusal to see one's self in others."
— Richard Powers

"On the ride back south, she tapped all the anger-management tricks they'd given her in job training. They played across her windshield like PowerPoint slides. Number One: It's not about you. Number Two: Your plan is not the world's. Number Three: The mind can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. (24)"
— Richard Powers (The Echo Maker: A Novel)

"In that weekly ecstatic keeping of faith and bearing of witness, Delia fell in love with singing. Singing was something that might make sense of a person. Singing might make more sense of life than living had to start with."
— Richard Powers (The Time of Our Singing: A Novel)

"What was acrophobia anyway, if not the half-acknowledged desire to jump?"
— Richard Powers

"The morning was glorious, one of those crystalline, dry, blue, fall days when the temperature hovers right at anticipation."
— Richard Powers