People are content to live in contradictory worlds, so long as they know the reason for each.
ALAN LIGHTMANA person who cannot imagine the future is a person who cannot contemplate the results of his actions. Some are thus paralyzed into inaction.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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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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I consider myself a spiritual atheist.
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And if the present has little effect on the future, present actions need not be weighed for their consequence.
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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.
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Writers are a loosely knit community – community is an overstated word. Writers don’t see each other very much.
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We don’t have the time, literally, to think during the day. To listen to ourselves think. To think about where we are going, who we are, what’s important.
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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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As a scientist, I don’t believe science will ever discover whether God exists. Nor do I believe religion will ever prove it.
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I value my correspondence with writers…
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There is a cultural diversity that’s very valuable, and it’s valuable to have different ways of looking at the world.
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With a background in science I am extremely interested in the meeting ground of science, theology, and philosophy, especially the ethical questions at the border of science and theology.
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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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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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No one ever expects poetry to sell…
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In fiction writing ideas have to be handled extremely carefully.
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Continents of memory had been lost.
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I love staying in written correspondence with some writers. That’s enough for me.
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All beliefs not in such contradiction may be considered as faith. Whether faith in a particular belief is beneficial or not is another matter.
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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.
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A life is a moment in season. A life is one snowfall. A life is one autumn day. A life is the delicate, rapid edge of a closing door’s shadow. A life is a brief movement of arms and of legs.
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You can’t let your characters just be mouthpieces for your ideas. They have to live and breathe on their own.
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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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Time is a rigid, bonelike structure, extending infinitely ahead and behind, fossilizing the future as well as the past.
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All of these things can occur with or without God. I do not believe in the existence of God, but I consider myself a spiritual person in the manner I have just described. I call myself a spiritual atheist. I would imagine that many people are spiritual atheists.
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Oh, love is very much a physical thing…. I realize that it’s very complicated, and I’m sure it can’t be traced to individual neurons and hormones, but I think it’s very much a physiological sensation that takes place in the brain.
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In our constant search for meaning in this baffling and temporary existence, trapped as we are within our three pounds of neurons,
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