Events, once happened, lose reality, alter with a glance, a storm, a night. In time, the past never happened. But who could know? Who could know that the past is not as solid as this instant.
ALAN LIGHTMANI think e-mail is representative of our fast food mentality in the United States, where everything has gotten faster and faster, and we’re required to respond to inputs more quickly with less time for thought and reflection.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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As I understand it, a universe is a … well, a totality. A universe is everything that is, as far as the inside of the thing.
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Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.
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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.
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In a world in which time is a circle, every handshake, every kiss, every birth, every word, will be repeated precisely.
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After a while the car becomes just another thing that he owns. Moreover, when his neighbor next door buys two cars, in an instant our man feels wretchedly poor and deprived.
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Some make light of decisions, arguing that all possible decisions will occur. In such a world, how could one be responsible for his actions?
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I value my correspondence with writers…
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Whenever Obama uses subtleties in discussing a complex issue, he gets creamed.
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Music is, of course, a universal emotional experience, cutting across cultures and languages. I studied piano for ten years as a child and consider that experience one of the most valuable in my life.
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Unfortunately, public debates do not have much room for subtlety. The audience wants a quick thrust at your opponent, not a slow and convoluted series of moves.
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Illuminated by only the most feeble red light, for light is diminished to almost nothing at the center of time, its vibrations slowed to echoes in vast canyons, its intensity reduced to the faint glow of fireflies.
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A novel has to be an emotional experience, a trip of the imagination, and because science has raised so many issues that concern and affect humans, it’s a good starting place for me.
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It’s the Platonic philosophy in The Republic that philosophers should lead the country.
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No one ever expects poetry to sell…
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I certainly believe there are forces bigger than ourselves, and that we should be searching, individually, for meaning in our lives. But I don’t believe there’s a supreme being, an intelligence that created everything.
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If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly.
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I reached for some principle that had been subconscious in me and lifted it into consciousness.
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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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A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation.
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Franz Kafka is an idea person. His books begin and end in ideas. Ideas have always been important to me in my writing.
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Each time is true, but the truths are not the same.
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I re-read a lot of books that I like a lot. There are some books that I try to reread every couple of years. A good book changes for you every few years because you are in a different place in your own life.
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I should have written books instead of reading them.
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Time is visible in all places. Clock towers, wristwatches, church bells divide years into months, months into days, days into hours, hours into seconds, each increment of time marching after the other in perfect succession.
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“The Diagnosis” is by far my most ambitious book. I such great hopes for it… there was so much I wanted to do with the book. I was extremely insecure about it for several years.
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My second novel, “Good Benito”, was not finished. I wished that I had spent another year with it.
ALAN LIGHTMAN