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Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions happen without the slightest consideration for human inhabitants.

Alan Lightman

Scientists turn reckless and mutter like gamblers who cannot stop betting. Scientists are buffoons, not because they are rational but because the cosmos is irrational.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Bet Irrational Rational Scientific Stop
Time is visible in all places. Clock towers, wristwatches, church bells divide years into months, months into days, days into hours, hours into seconds, each increment of time marching after the other in perfect succession.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Church Clock Divide Increment March Month Succession Tower
With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great grandparents, great-aunts…and so on, back through the generations, all alive and offering advice.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Advice Alive All Aunt Come Die Generation Grandparent Great Infinite Offer Relative
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Down Maybe Minute People Sit Think
And beyond any particular clock, a vast scaffold of time, stretching across the universe, lays down the law of time equally for all.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Beyond Down Equally Law Particular Stretch
While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Ahead Back Brood Doubt Look People
And of course, that makes it frightening to start a new book because you can’t really depend upon what you’ve done with previous books.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Course Depend Done Frighten Make Previous
it is sometimes hard to tell what is real. We often invent what isn’t there. Or ignore what is.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Hard Ignore Invent Real Sometimes Tell There
“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

Appointment Body Exist Morning Precisely Think
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Been Country Leader People Think
Children curse their parents for their wrinkled skin and hoarse voices. Those now old children also want to stop time, but at another time. They want to freeze their own children at the center of time.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Center Children Curse Parent Time Voice Wrinkle
In this world, artists are joyous. Unpredictability is the life of their paintings, their music, their novels. They delight in events not forecasted, happenings without explanation, retrospective.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Artist Joyful Life Music Novel Paint Unpredictability World
Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Complete Different Every Reader Sense Something Way
I appreciate the idea of the individual person battling the society – which is true in all his books.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Appreciate Book Ideas Person Society
When they are on their cell phones they are not where their bodies are…they are somewhere else in hyperspace. They are not grounded.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Body Cell Ground Hyperspace Phone Somewhere
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Comic Diagnosis Funny Modern Overall Tragedy

Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions happen without the slightest consideration for human inhabitants.

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Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions happen without the slightest consideration for human inhabitants.

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