“The Diagnosis” had ten drafts of very significant changing, where I went through the whole book, wholesale and changed everything. Then the last year or so it was making small changes.
ALAN LIGHTMANI’m still happy with the way Einstein’s Dreams came out. That book came out of a single inspiration. I really felt like I was not creating the words, that I was hearing the words.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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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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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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it is sometimes hard to tell what is real. We often invent what isn’t there. Or ignore what is.
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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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If you told a story that was all darkness, it wouldn’t be real.
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All other giving is selfish. But he is being selfish a little, isn’t he, by wanting her to love him in return?
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In the coffee houses, in the government buildings, in boats of Lake Geneva, people look at their watches and take refuge in time.
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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.
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The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.
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“The Diagnosis” is by far my most ambitious book. I such great hopes for it… there was so much I wanted to do with the book. I was extremely insecure about it for several years.
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Sexual arousal is no more than a flow of chemicals to certain nerve endings.
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A world with one month is a world of equality.
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To the point that I have to be careful that they don’t take over.
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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. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.
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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…
ALAN LIGHTMAN






