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All other giving is selfish. But he is being selfish a little, isn’t he, by wanting her to love him in return?

Alan Lightman

For my students who are trying to learn the craft of writing in a writing class – contemporary literature is what’s most useful.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Class Contemporary Craft Learn Literature Mist Student Try Useful Write
It is true that the arts at MIT don’t have the same amount of funding or same status as the sciences or engineering.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Amount Art Engineer Fund Same Science Status True
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Body Fluent Time Traditional Two World
Life is a vessel of sadness, but is noble to live life and without time there is no life. Others disagree.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Continent Disagree Eternal Fix Frozen Life
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

Book Father Journey Life Process Secret Tell Uncover Woman
Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Complete Different Every Reader Sense Something Way
Order is the law of nature, the universal trend, the cosmic direction. If time is an arrow, that arrow points toward order.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Law Nature Order
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Human Imagination Machine Match Mind Since Technology Unlikely
Novels aren’t pedagogical instruments, or instructions in law or physics or any other discipline.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Discipline Instruction Instrument Law Novel Other Pedagogical Physics
It’s the Platonic philosophy in The Republic that philosophers should lead the country.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Country Lead Philosophy Republic
Like the air we breathe or like the passage of time, is central to our existence as intelligent beings.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Air Begin Breathe Central Existence Intelligent Like Passage Time
Another strand of my writing is the importance of the idea.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Another Strand Idea Importance Write
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Love Much Physical Thing
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Exist God Know Nature Sense
Others hold that each decision must be considered and committed to, that without commitment there is chaos. Such people are content to live in contradictory worlds, so long as they know the reason for each.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Chaos Commitment Consider Contradictory Hold People Word
And beyond any particular clock, a vast scaffold of time, stretching across the universe, lays down the law of time equally for all.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Beyond Down Equally Law Particular Stretch

All other giving is selfish. But he is being selfish a little, isn’t he, by wanting her to love him in return?

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All other giving is selfish. But he is being selfish a little, isn’t he, by wanting her to love him in return?

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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