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

Alan Lightman

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
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
What I am very disturbed about is this trend of everything happening faster and faster and faster and there being more and more general noise in the world, and less and less time for quiet reflection on who we are, and where we’re going.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Disturb Everything Faster Happen Less Quiet World
The mother and father osprey stay together. It’s a monogamous relationship. And every summer they raise a new brood of children.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Brood Children Father Monogamous Mother Osprey Summer Through Watch
Writers read essays and serious thinkers and serious readers… that is a small population.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Essay Population Raed Serious Small Thinker Writer
But rational thoughts lead only to rational thoughts, whereas irrational thoughts lead to new experiences.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Experience Irrational Lead New Rational Thought
The book is finished by the reader. A good novel should invite the reader in and let the reader participate in the creative experience and bring their own life experiences to it, interpret with their own individual life experiences.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Creative Finish Good Let Novel Participate Raeder
We’ve lost our way, we have lost our centeredness.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Centeredness Lost Way
There is a place where time stands still.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Place Stand Still Time
A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation. For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Absolute Consolation Time World
If you think about fiction writing as a spectrum, where at one end of the spectrum in the infrared, are the story tellers, and the people for whom creation of wonderful characters and telling a good story is the most important thing.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Character Creation Fiction Infrared Tell Think Wonderful
For it is only habit and memory that dulls the physical passion. Without memory, each night is the first night, each morning is the first morning, each kiss and touch are the first.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Dull Habit Memory Only Passion Physical
I would do something and let it sit for three months… just brood about and decide I needed to slightly change something here or there. Or one character wasn’t quite right. But I think everybody goes through this.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Brood Character Direct Everybody Month Need Slight Something
If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Ambition Duffer Hold Person Unknowingly
I wouldn’t overall say that “The Diagnosis” is a funny book. I would say that it has comic moments. It’s a modern tragedy.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Comic Diagnosis Funny Modern Overall Tragedy
Body time flows at its own variable rate, oblivious to the most precise hydrogen master clocks in the laboratory. In fact, the human body contains its own exquisite time-pieces, all with their separate rhythms.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Body Contain Exquisite Fact Flow Hydrogen Laboratory Oblivious Variable
When I used to play golf. It’s a terrible miserable game. It’s incredibly frustrating. In 18 holes you make 150 horrible shots off in the woods, in the water…
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Game Golf Play Terrible Use
Science is an intellectual journey, and to me, it’s not the destination.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Destination Intellectual Journey Science
I was in New York and had lunch with Oliver Sachs and compared notes with him – he is someone I really like.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Compare Country Food Like Lunch Note Really Someone
I have no opposition at all to technology. I think technology is a wonderful thing that has to be used thoughtfully, and we can’t just assume that every bit of new technology improvesthe quality of life; it’s really in how the technology is used.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Opposition Technology Thing Think Use Wonderful
They came back to the nest in the middle of April. They take separate vacations in the winter – the mother and father.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

April Back Came Enter Father Middle Mother Separate Vacation
Franz Kafka is an idea person. His books begin and end in ideas. Ideas have always been important to me in my writing.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Always Been Begin Book End I Idea People Person Portrait Write
You can’t let your characters just be mouthpieces for your ideas. They have to live and breathe on their own.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Breathe Character Idea Just Live Mouthpiece Own
We walk from room to room, look into the room that is lit, the present moment, then walk on. We do not know the rooms ahead, but we know we cannot change them. We are spectators of our lives.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Ahead Moment Room Spectator Walk
The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Alone Joy Life Person Share Stuck Tragedy
A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Absolute Consolation Time World
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Advice Alive All Aunt Come Die Generation Grandparent Great Infinite Offer Relative

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

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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