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I’ve taken a philosophical position on e-mail. Although I think it’s a wonderful communication technology, and it has a lot of good uses, it is abused quite a lot.

Alan Lightman

As human beings, don’t we need questions without answers as well as questions with answers, questions that we might someday answer and questions that we can never answer?
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Answer Human Being might Need Question Someday Well
In a world of fixed future, life is an infinite corridor of rooms, one room lit at each moment, the next room dark but prepared.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Corridor Dark Each Fixed Infinite Life Moment Next Prepare Room World
Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Complete Different Reader Sense Something Way
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
I believe that we need to slow down.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Believe Down Need Slow
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Autumn Day Life Moment One Season Snowfall
Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free. Over time, some have determined that the only way to live is to die. In death, a man or a woman is free of the weight of the past [and the future].
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Cost Determine Free Future Immortality No Person Such Whole Woman
I’ve taken a philosophical position on e-mail. Although I think it’s a wonderful communication technology, and it has a lot of good uses, it is abused quite a lot.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

E-mail Philosophy Position Taken
You say, “Something important really happened here. I really had hold of something I was visited by the muse.” And that’s enough to make you continue the months and years to finish the whole book.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Happened Important Muse Really Something Visit
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
Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who can say which, in an acausal world?
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Actual Cosmo Irrational Perhaps Rational World
I value my correspondence with writers…
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Correspondance Value Writer
In the coffee houses, in the government buildings, in boats of Lake Geneva, people look at their watches and take refuge in time.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Boat Building Coffee Government House Look Refuge Time Watch
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Canyon Chemical Diminish Faint Fireflies Glow Light More Red Sexual
The exploding star of A.D. 1054, the Crab Nebula, was sighted and documented by the Chinese, but nowhere mentioned in the West, where the Aristotelian notion of the immortality of stars still held sway.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Document Explode Held Immortality Mentioned Slight
That’s the fine balance of a fiction writer…to be able to give your characters enough freedom to surprise you and yet still maintain some kind of artistic control.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Artistic Balance Character Control Fiction Fine Freedom Maintain Surprise Writer

I’ve taken a philosophical position on e-mail. Although I think it’s a wonderful communication technology, and it has a lot of good uses, it is abused quite a lot.

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I’ve taken a philosophical position on e-mail. Although I think it’s a wonderful communication technology, and it has a lot of good uses, it is abused quite a lot.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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