I would bet most people don’t have thirty minutes in a day where they can just sit down and think. Or maybe they don’t have to be sitting, they can be walking.
ALAN LIGHTMANSexual arousal is no more than a flow of chemicals to certain nerve endings.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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But what is the past? Could it be, the firmness of the past is just illusion? Could the past be a kaleidoscope, a pattern of images that shift with each disturbance of a sudden breeze, a laugh, a thought? And if the shift is everywhere, how would we know?
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Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.
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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.
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You’ve made something grand, but it will be grander if it has feeling and beauty and harmony.
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Some make light of decisions, arguing that all possible decisions will occur. In such a world, how could one be responsible for his actions?
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In this world, artists are joyous. Unpredictability is the life of their paintings, their music, their novels. They delight in events not forecasted, happenings without explanation, retrospective.
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Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way.
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Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing by rain?
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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.
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One day I’m going to write a book about osprey. It has really gotten deep into my bloodstream. So when you ask what else I do, I feel like this is part of what I do….is to watch these birds.
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At every point of decision, the world splits into three worlds, each with the same people, but different fates for those people. In time, there are an infinity of worlds.
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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.
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Life is a vessel of sadness, but is noble to live life and without time there is no life. Others disagree.
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it is sometimes hard to tell what is real. We often invent what isn’t there. Or ignore what is.
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One metaphor for how we are living is that you see so may people with cell phones.
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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.
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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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My second novel, “Good Benito”, was not finished. I wished that I had spent another year with it.
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There is a place where time stands still.
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I have too many friends who tell me that they spend the first hour of every morning going through their e-mail messages. I’d like to use my time more carefully.
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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.
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I think what gets you through a small writing project, is just one burst of inspiration.
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The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present.
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In our constant search for meaning in this baffling and temporary existence, trapped as we are within our three pounds of neurons,
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An unusual counterpoint between personal history and the history of a young nation. Haunting, powerful, and beautifully written.
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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