Franz Kafka is an idea person. His books begin and end in ideas. Ideas have always been important to me in my writing.
ALAN LIGHTMANIn this world, artists are joyous. Unpredictability is the life of their paintings, their music, their novels. They delight in events not forecasted, happenings without explanation, retrospective.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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So many little lives, amounting to nothing. I ask you: What is infinity multiplied by zero? It is hardly worth our discussion.
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And since the human mind has a degree of infinity and imagination unlikely to be matched by a machine for a very, very long time, I don’t think that we will become the machines of the machines.
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it is sometimes hard to tell what is real. We often invent what isn’t there. Or ignore what is.
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I have a number of vague ideas where I just have the core or kernel of the idea. I feel like I need some time for my mind to fill up again. I feel empty. Right now.
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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.
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No one ever expects poetry to sell…
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In short, the body is a machine, subject to the same laws of electricity and mechanics as an electron or clock.
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The time-deaf are unable to speak what they know. For speech needs a sequence of words, spoken in time.
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The first is as rigid and metallic as a massive pendulum of iron that swings back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
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It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning.
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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.
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We try to connect. We try to find truth. We dream and we hope. And underneath all of these strivings, we are haunted by the suspicion that what we see and understand of the world is only a tiny piece of the whole.
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And of course, that makes it frightening to start a new book because you can’t really depend upon what you’ve done with previous books.
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You’ve made something grand, but it will be grander if it has feeling and beauty and harmony.
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The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.
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Scientists will forever have to live with the fact that their product is, in the end, impersonal.
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It’s the journeyto get there. It’s a way of thinking and it’s an intellectual curiosity, a desire to know how the world works, and to know what the fundamental principles of the world are, and to know our place in it.
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The great ideas in science, like the Cro-Magnon paintings and the plays of Shakespeare, are part of our cultural heritage.
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Continents of memory had been lost.
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A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation.
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I have also been fascinated for a long time with the intersection of science and religion.
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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.
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It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity.
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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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Human beings consider themselves satisfied only compared to some other condition.
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The target of power is more interesting than its quantity.
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