My dream has always been to suspend myself in space when I write, and lying horizontal in bed is the closest to doing that.
Richard PowersAll the different ways we know the world all come from the brain, and they all depend on each other to make sense.
Richard PowersThe job of taste was to thin the insane torrent of human creativity down to manageable levels. But the job of appetite was never to be happy with taste.
Richard PowersTime 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.
Richard Powers