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If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.

Alan Lightman

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
I oppose any belief that contradicts experimental evidence as determined by the methods of science.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Belief Contradict Determine Evidence Experiment Method Oppose Science
There is a place where time stands still.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Place Stand Still Time
Authenticity and sincerity were the most important unifying principles of all these apparently different essays.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Authenticity Consciousness Essay Lift Sincerity
I think all tragedies are best told with some humor. You have to relieve the darkness to let the reader get through it. Also, that life has happiness and sadness mixed together.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Humor Some Think Told Tragedy
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
It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Glance Meaning Moment Speak Spoken World
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
The future is pattern, organization, union, intensification; the past, randomness, confusion, disintegration, dissipation.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Future Order Organisation Past Pattern Point
The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Happy Joy One Pain Stuck Time Tragedy World
One cannot walk down an avenue, converse with a friend, enter a building, browse beneath the sandstone arches of an old arcade without meeting an instrument of time.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Arcade Instrument Arch Avenue Beneath Browse Build Converse Down Enter Friend Sandstone Time
Some say it is best not to go near the center of time.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Best Center Go Near Not Say Some Time
The loved one will never take his arms from where they are now, will never give back the bracelet of memories, will never journey afar from his lover, will never place himself in danger of self-sacrifice.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Danger Fall Jealous Journey Love Memory Self Someone
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
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
We feel such a strong connection to nature. But the relationship between nature and us is one-sided. There is no reciprocity. There is no mind on the other side of the wall.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Aside Connection Mind Reciprocity Relationship Strong Wall

If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.

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If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.

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