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While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.

Alan Lightman

Scientists turn reckless and mutter like gamblers who cannot stop betting. Scientists are buffoons, not because they are rational but because the cosmos is irrational.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Bet Irrational Rational Scientific Stop
The second squirms and wriggles like a bluefish in a bay. The first is unyielding, predetermined. The second makes up its mind as it goes along.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Along Bluefish Make Mind Predetrmine Second Squirm Unyield Wriggle
They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Butterfly Case Contentment Eternity Even Fix Frozen
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
The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Happy Joy One Pain Stuck Time Tragedy World
Not only will two different readers get something different but so will a single reader at different points in his life.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Different Life Point Reader Singer Something
I think it is always a long shot getting a book made into a film.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Always Book Film Long Made Think
Another strand of my writing is the importance of the idea.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Another Strand Idea Importance Write
I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jose Saramago, Michael Bulgakov, and Salman Rushdie.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Author Fabulist Fiction Imagination Long Love People Such Write Time
Our species has advanced from Stone Age to Industrial Revolution to Digital Emptiness. We’ve become weightless, in the bad sense of the word.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Advance Imagination Revolution Sense Species World
I have always loved magic realism as a form of writing.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Always Form Magic Realism Write
And at the place where time stands still, one sees lovers kissing in the shadows of buildings, in a frozen embrace that will never let go.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Build Embrace Frozen Go Kiss Let Lover Place See Shadow Stand
I reached for some principle that had been subconscious in me and lifted it into consciousness.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Lift Principle Reach Some Subconscious
With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great grandparents, great-aunts…and so on, back through the generations, all alive and offering advice.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Advice Alive All Aunt Come Die Generation Grandparent Great Infinite Offer Relative
We often do not see what we do not expect to see.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Expect Often See
I would think that you are more fluent with the rational. It has its appeal. But the irrational permits a greater exercise of … shall we say, power.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Body Fluent Time Traditional Two World

While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.

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While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.

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