If I were not a writer, I would spend more time doing the things that I am already doing, which include doing research in physics, teaching, and running a nonprofit organization with a mission to empower women in Cambodia.
ALAN LIGHTMANMy writings are an exploration, and I think a lot of writers would tell you this, but in writing, you’re not simply putting down things that are already known to you. You’re actually discovering in the writing process, you’re actually creating knowledge.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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The relationship between science and the humanities is two-way. Science changes our view of the world and our place in it. In the other direction, the humanities provide the store of ideas and images and language available to us in understanding the world.
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It’s not necessarily a large number of people that affect the culture. You don’t count the number of influential voices, you weigh them. A hundred people can affect the culture.
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Just didn’t know whether I would finish the book much less for it to come close to what I intended. I think that for any novel you never know exactly how the book is going to turn out…
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I’m still happy with the way Einstein’s Dreams came out. That book came out of a single inspiration. I really felt like I was not creating the words, that I was hearing the words.
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Time is the clarity for seeing right and wrong.
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“Then there are those who think their bodies don’t exist. They live by mechanical time. They rise at seven o’clock in the morning. They eat their lunch at noon and their supper at six. They arrive at their appointments on time, precisely by the clock.
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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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I oppose any belief that contradicts experimental evidence as determined by the methods of science.
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Will never fail to show his love, will never become jealous, will never fall in love with someone else, will never lose the passion of this instant of time.
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It’s a flow of chemicals and electrical currents, and it developed over millions of years in the process of evolution to aid in the procreation of the species.
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In a world without future, each moment is the end of the world.
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We live in a highly polarized society. We need to try to understand each other in respectful ways.
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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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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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The Book of Telling tells of a woman’s journey to uncover the secret life of her father and to find herself in the process.
ALAN LIGHTMAN