You make one good shot and it brings you back the next time. With writing a long book there has to be at least one bit that has some magic in it that you can go back to.
ALAN LIGHTMANIt’s the journeyto get there. It’s a way of thinking and it’s an intellectual curiosity, a desire to know how the world works, and to know what the fundamental principles of the world are, and to know our place in it.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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Some make light of decisions, arguing that all possible decisions will occur. In such a world, how could one be responsible for his actions?
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Most people have learned to live in the moment.
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Scientists will forever have to live with the fact that their product is, in the end, impersonal.
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The book is finished by the reader. A good novel should invite the reader in and let the reader participate in the creative experience and bring their own life experiences to it, interpret with their own individual life experiences.
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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.
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Everyone shares the same fate.
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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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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.
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The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in atime of pain or of joy.
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The time-deaf are unable to speak what they know. For speech needs a sequence of words, spoken in time.
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But rational thoughts lead only to rational thoughts, whereas irrational thoughts lead to new experiences.
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When they are on their cell phones they are not where their bodies are…they are somewhere else in hyperspace. They are not grounded.
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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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It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning.
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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?
ALAN LIGHTMAN






