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“The Diagnosis” had ten drafts of very significant changing, where I went through the whole book, wholesale and changed everything. Then the last year or so it was making small changes.

Alan Lightman

Writers are a loosely knit community – community is an overstated word. Writers don’t see each other very much.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Community Lose Overstate Word Writer
If you over-plot your book you strangle your characters. Your characters have to have enough freedom and life to be able to surprise you.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Character Pilot Strangle
I go to live in Maine for the summer. Without computer, and without the telephone service we are mercifully without the faxes and e-mails.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Computer E-mail Live Merciful Service Summer Talk Telephone
Where are the one billion people who lived and breathed in the year 1800, only two short centuries ago?
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Ago Billion Breathed Century Live Only People Two Year
Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing of rain?
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Anything Cloud Evaporate Ocean Pure Rain Replenishing
I still will sit down at the piano and play when I am wrestling with something emotionally or just want to move into the musical world.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Down Emotion Move Musical Piano Something World Wrestling
Each time is true, but the truths are not the same.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Each Same Time True Truth
Originality is also very important to a writer. And all of the writers I’ve mentioned, of course, are original, but it’s important to me that every book that I do be really a completely fresh and new look at the world.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Course Every Fresh Important Look Mention Original World Writer
Despite our strongly felt kinship and oneness with nature, all the evidence suggests that nature doesn’t care one whit about us.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Care Despite Felt Kinship Nature Oneness Strongly Us
Except for a God who sits down after the universe begins, all other gods conflict with the assumptions of science.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Aftre Begin Down Ecept Gof Sit Universe
A person who cannot imagine the future is a person who cannot contemplate the results of his actions. Some are thus paralyzed into inaction.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Action Contemplate Future Imagine Person Result
Although technology is proceeding at a dizzying pace, I believe that the human mind will always have control of itself.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Dixxle Pace Proceed Technology
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Course Depend Done Frighten Make Previous
That someone else was speaking the words to me and I was just writing them down. It was a very strange experience. That can happen with a short book. I don’t think it could happen with a long book.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Down Experience Happen Shor Someone Speak Strange
When the first mechanical clocks were invented, marking off time in crisp, regular intervals, it must have surprised people to discover that time flowed outside their own mental and physiological processes.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Clock Crisp First Interval Invent Make Mechanical Time
As a scientist, I don’t believe science will ever discover whether God exists. Nor do I believe religion will ever prove it.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Belive Discover Ever Exist God Prove Religion Scientist

“The Diagnosis” had ten drafts of very significant changing, where I went through the whole book, wholesale and changed everything. Then the last year or so it was making small changes.

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“The Diagnosis” had ten drafts of very significant changing, where I went through the whole book, wholesale and changed everything. Then the last year or so it was making small changes.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Alan Lightman Quotes