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We try to impose order, both in our minds and in our conceptions of external reality.

Alan Lightman

The future is pattern, organization, union, intensification; the past, randomness, confusion, disintegration, dissipation.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Future Order Organisation Past Pattern Point
Novels aren’t pedagogical instruments, or instructions in law or physics or any other discipline.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Discipline Instruction Instrument Law Novel Other Pedagogical Physics
The target of power is more interesting than its quantity.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Interest More Power Quantity Target
A man who has owned nothing but a bicycle all of his life feels suddenly wealthy the moment he buys an automobile…But this happy sensation wears off.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Automobile Bicycle Buy Happy Life Nothing Own Sensation Suddenly Wealthy Wear
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Clock Crisp First Interval Invent Make Mechanical Time
That’s the fine balance of a fiction writer…to be able to give your characters enough freedom to surprise you and yet still maintain some kind of artistic control.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Artistic Balance Character Control Fiction Fine Freedom Maintain Surprise Writer
I think what gets you through a small writing project, is just one burst of inspiration.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Burst Inspiration Project Small Think Write
I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jose Saramago, Michael Bulgakov, and Salman Rushdie.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Author Fabulist Fiction Imagination Long Love People Such Write Time
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
Writers are a loosely knit community – community is an overstated word. Writers don’t see each other very much.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Community Lose Overstate Word Writer
As human beings, don’t we need questions without answers as well as questions with answers, questions that we might someday answer and questions that we can never answer?
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Answer Human Being might Need Question Someday Well
They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Butterfly Case Contentment Eternity Even Fix Frozen
Thoughts are no more than electrical surges in the brain.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Brain Electrical More Surge
I have a family and you know very well the time that that takes. That’s good time. I have a couple hobbies. I’m a runner and play tennis. In the summer my family and I uproot ourselves and go live in Maine for the summer.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Couple Family Good Time Hobby Know Take Time Very Well
And if we can’t unplug from that machine, eventually we’re going to become mindless.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Become Eventually Go Machine Mindless Unplug
And since the human mind has a degree of infinity and imagination unlikely to be matched by a machine for a very, very long time, I don’t think that we will become the machines of the machines.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Human Imagination Machine Match Mind Since Technology Unlikely
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Cycle Life Listen Lot Osprey Spend Time Watch
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
In fiction writing, I would say there are several different strands that have been woven through my own writing, and each influenced by a different group of writers.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Different Each Fiction Group Influence Several Stand Woven Write
Imagine a world in which there is no time. Only images.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Image Imagine Nom Time World
In our constant search for meaning in this baffling and temporary existence, trapped as we are within our three pounds of neurons,
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Baffle Constant Existence Mean Neuron Proud Search Temporary Three Trap
I am spellbound by the plays of Shakespeare. And I am spellbound by the second law of thermodynamics.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Author Law Play Second Spellbound Thermodynamic
It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Glance Meaning Moment Speak Spoken World
I have too many friends who tell me that they spend the first hour of every morning going through their e-mail messages. I’d like to use my time more carefully.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

E-mail First Friend Gone Hours Every Many Message Moring Spend Tell Through Too
In a world without future, each laugh is the last laugh. In a world without future, beyond the present lies nothingness, and people cling to the present as if hanging from a cliff.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Beyond Cliff Future Hang Laugh Nothingness Present
In this world, time has three dimensions, like space.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Dimension Space Three Time World
Every essay – the subject matter of every essay – is ultimately about the essayist; him or herself. That ultimately, every essayist is writing about his or her view of the world.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Essay Every Him Himself Matter Subject Ultimate

We try to impose order, both in our minds and in our conceptions of external reality.

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We try to impose order, both in our minds and in our conceptions of external reality.

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