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.
ALAN LIGHTMANEach person knows that somewhere is recorded the moment she was born, the moment she took her first step, the moment of her first passion, the moment she said goodbye to her parents.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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The loved one will never take his arms from where they are now, will never give back the bracelet of memories, will never journey afar from his lover, will never place himself in danger of self-sacrifice.
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I was in New York and had lunch with Oliver Sachs and compared notes with him – he is someone I really like.
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A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation. For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable.
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In fiction writing ideas have to be handled extremely carefully.
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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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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…
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I think once we stop asking questions like “what is the age of the universe,” or “how are the instructions of DNA carried out on a microscopic level,” once we stop asking questions like that, we’re dead.
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Illuminated by only the most feeble red light, for light is diminished to almost nothing at the center of time, its vibrations slowed to echoes in vast canyons, its intensity reduced to the faint glow of fireflies.
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I have always loved magic realism as a form of writing.
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My writings are an exploration, and I think a lot of writers would tell you this, but in writing, you’re not simply putting down things that are already known to you. You’re actually discovering in the writing process, you’re actually creating knowledge.
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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.
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In a world of fixed future, life is an infinite corridor of rooms, one room lit at each moment, the next room dark but prepared.
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Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who can say which, in an acausal world?
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In short, the body is a machine, subject to the same laws of electricity and mechanics as an electron or clock.
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Continents of memory had been lost.
ALAN LIGHTMAN