The history of science can be viewed as the recasting of phenomena that were once thought to be accidents as phenomena that can be understood in terms of fundamental causes and principles.
ALAN LIGHTMANHe hopes that she loves him in return. Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back?
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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Events, once happened, lose reality, alter with a glance, a storm, a night. In time, the past never happened. But who could know? Who could know that the past is not as solid as this instant.
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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.
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I’m humbled and enormously grateful to be connected to [Franz] Kafka in a any way. He is one of the writers I admire. I think he has been a big influence on me.
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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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Imagine a world in which there is no time. Only images.
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Science is an intellectual journey, and to me, it’s not the destination.
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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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My writings are an exploration, and I think a lot of writers would tell you this, but in writing, you’re not simply putting down things that are already known to you. You’re actually discovering in the writing process, you’re actually creating knowledge.
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In a world in which time is a circle, every handshake, every kiss, every birth, every word, will be repeated precisely.
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You make one good shot and it brings you back the next time. With writing a long book there has to be at least one bit that has some magic in it that you can go back to.
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Music is, of course, a universal emotional experience, cutting across cultures and languages. I studied piano for ten years as a child and consider that experience one of the most valuable in my life.
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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.
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They came back to the nest in the middle of April. They take separate vacations in the winter – the mother and father.
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I reached for some principle that had been subconscious in me and lifted it into consciousness.
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The second squirms and wriggles like a bluefish in a bay. The first is unyielding, predetermined. The second makes up its mind as it goes along.
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If you told a story that was all darkness, it wouldn’t be real.
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In this acausal world, scientists are helpless.
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Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.
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I consider myself a spiritual atheist.
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Writers read essays and serious thinkers and serious readers… that is a small population.
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It’s not necessarily a large number of people that affect the culture. You don’t count the number of influential voices, you weigh them. A hundred people can affect the culture.
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We don’t have the time, literally, to think during the day. To listen to ourselves think. To think about where we are going, who we are, what’s important.
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I have always loved magic realism as a form of writing.
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It is true that the arts at MIT don’t have the same amount of funding or same status as the sciences or engineering.
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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.
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“Then there are those who think their bodies don’t exist. They live by mechanical time. They rise at seven o’clock in the morning. They eat their lunch at noon and their supper at six. They arrive at their appointments on time, precisely by the clock.
ALAN LIGHTMAN