Faith is the ability to honor stillness at some moments, and at others to ride the passion and exuberance.
ALAN LIGHTMANIs anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing of rain?
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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I am spellbound by the plays of Shakespeare. And I am spellbound by the second law of thermodynamics.
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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.
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I think Joe Leiberman has been one of the leaders of the country… people have such a broad respect for him as a moral force.
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They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.
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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].
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We try to connect. We try to find truth. We dream and we hope. And underneath all of these strivings, we are haunted by the suspicion that what we see and understand of the world is only a tiny piece of the whole.
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Whenever Obama uses subtleties in discussing a complex issue, he gets creamed.
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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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When they are on their cell phones they are not where their bodies are…they are somewhere else in hyperspace. They are not grounded.
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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.
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I love the fact publishers are still publishing unprofitable material. It’s a challenge to the powers that be. It’s saying there is a real literature in this country and we will keep publishing it.
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Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers. Nor do daughters of their mothers. No one ever comes into his own…Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free.
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Franz Kafka is an idea person. His books begin and end in ideas. Ideas have always been important to me in my writing.
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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.
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We’ve lost our way, we have lost our centeredness.
ALAN LIGHTMAN






