In short, the body is a machine, subject to the same laws of electricity and mechanics as an electron or clock.
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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And at the place where time stands still, one sees lovers kissing in the shadows of buildings, in a frozen embrace that will never let go.
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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.
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It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity.
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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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A novel has to be an emotional experience, a trip of the imagination, and because science has raised so many issues that concern and affect humans, it’s a good starting place for me.
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He hopes that she loves him in return. Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back?
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I wouldn’t overall say that “The Diagnosis” is a funny book. I would say that it has comic moments. It’s a modern tragedy.
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Each future moves in a different direction of time. Each future is real.
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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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Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.
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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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All of these things can occur with or without God. I do not believe in the existence of God, but I consider myself a spiritual person in the manner I have just described. I call myself a spiritual atheist. I would imagine that many people are spiritual atheists.
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I’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.
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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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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.
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All writers have roots they draw from – travel, work, family. My roots are in science and it is fertile ground for fiction.
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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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Each time is true, but the truths are not the same.
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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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We’ve lost our way, we have lost our centeredness.
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I have no opposition at all to technology. I think technology is a wonderful thing that has to be used thoughtfully, and we can’t just assume that every bit of new technology improvesthe quality of life; it’s really in how the technology is used.
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In fiction writing ideas have to be handled extremely carefully.
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You can’t let your characters just be mouthpieces for your ideas. They have to live and breathe on their own.
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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.
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I should have written books instead of reading them.
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And if the present has little effect on the future, present actions need not be weighed for their consequence.
ALAN LIGHTMAN