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I would bet most people don’t have thirty minutes in a day where they can just sit down and think. Or maybe they don’t have to be sitting, they can be walking.

Alan Lightman

Novels aren’t pedagogical instruments, or instructions in law or physics or any other discipline.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Discipline Instruction Instrument Law Novel Other Pedagogical Physics
I am spellbound by the plays of Shakespeare. And I am spellbound by the second law of thermodynamics.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Author Law Play Second Spellbound Thermodynamic
I’ve taken a philosophical position on e-mail. Although I think it’s a wonderful communication technology, and it has a lot of good uses, it is abused quite a lot.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

E-mail Philosophy Position Taken
I consider myself a spiritual atheist.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Atheist Consider Myself Spiritual
In fiction writing ideas have to be handled extremely carefully.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Carefully Extremely Fiction Handle Idea Write
Nature is purposeless. Nature simply is. We may find nature beautiful or terrible, but those feelings are human constructions. Such utter and complete mindlessness is hard for us to accept.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Nature Purposeless Simply
I picked such seemingly disparate essays, I thought it was important to say what was the guiding principle in the selection rather than focus on any one essay.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Disparate Essay Guide Important Pick Power Say Seemingly Thought
I have too many friends who tell me that they spend the first hour of every morning going through their e-mail messages. I’d like to use my time more carefully.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

E-mail First Friend Gone Hours Every Many Message Moring Spend Tell Through Too
In the coffee houses, in the government buildings, in boats of Lake Geneva, people look at their watches and take refuge in time.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Boat Building Coffee Government House Look Refuge Time Watch
And if we can’t unplug from that machine, eventually we’re going to become mindless.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Become Eventually Go Machine Mindless Unplug
Unconditional love. That’s what he wants to give her and what he wants from her. People should give without wanting anything in return.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Anything Give Love People Return Unconditional Want
A world with one month is a world of equality.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Equality Month One Liner World
No one knows the nature of God, or even if God exists. In a sense, all of our religions are literary works of the imagination.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Exist God Know Nature Sense
We try to impose order, both in our minds and in our conceptions of external reality.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Both Conception External Impose Mind Order Reality
I consider myself an essayist and a fiction writer. In the essays, I certainly have been influenced by some of the leading science essayists. Like Loren Eiseley, Stephen Jay Gould, Lewis Thomas.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Consider Essayist Fiction Myself Writer
A book, especially a longer book, it’s a different kind of force that pushes you through it. It’s a vision of the whole thing.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Different Especially Force Kind Longer Push Vision

I would bet most people don’t have thirty minutes in a day where they can just sit down and think. Or maybe they don’t have to be sitting, they can be walking.

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I would bet most people don’t have thirty minutes in a day where they can just sit down and think. Or maybe they don’t have to be sitting, they can be walking.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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