If you over-plot your book you strangle your characters. Your characters have to have enough freedom and life to be able to surprise you.
ALAN LIGHTMANI think what gets you through a small writing project, is just one burst of inspiration.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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I believe that we need to slow down.
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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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With a background in science I am extremely interested in the meeting ground of science, theology, and philosophy, especially the ethical questions at the border of science and theology.
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The urge to discover, to invent, to know the unknown, seems so deeply human that we cannot imagine our history without it.
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The world is moving faster and faster, but where are we going?I think one of the reasons why things are getting blurry is because there is not much meaning.
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I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jose Saramago, Michael Bulgakov, and Salman Rushdie.
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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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In fiction writing ideas have to be handled extremely carefully.
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I spend a lot of time just listening to the ospreys. I watch them go through their life cycle. They spend the winter in South America.
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We often do not see what we do not expect to see.
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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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“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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Continents of memory had been lost.
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Unconditional love. That’s what he wants to give her and what he wants from her. People should give without wanting anything in return.
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Writers read essays and serious thinkers and serious readers… that is a small population.
ALAN LIGHTMAN