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Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way.

Alan Lightman

Who would fare better in this world of fitful time? Those who have seen the future and live only one life? Or those who have not seen the future and wait to live life? Or those who deny the future and live two lives?
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Better Fulfil Future Libe Life One Seen Time World
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
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
Time is the clarity for seeing right and wrong.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Clarity Right See Wrong
The belief or disbelief in such a Being is therefore a matter of faith.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Being Belief Disbelief Faith Matter
“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
The target of power is more interesting than its quantity.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Interest More Power Quantity Target
After a while the car becomes just another thing that he owns. Moreover, when his neighbor next door buys two cars, in an instant our man feels wretchedly poor and deprived.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Become Buy Car Deprive Door Feel Man Moreover Neighbour Poor
Originality is also very important to a writer. And all of the writers I’ve mentioned, of course, are original, but it’s important to me that every book that I do be really a completely fresh and new look at the world.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Course Every Fresh Important Look Mention Original World Writer
Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Acid Bit Cerebellum More Sadness Transfix
For my students who are trying to learn the craft of writing in a writing class – contemporary literature is what’s most useful.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Class Contemporary Craft Learn Literature Mist Student Try Useful Write
The exploding star of A.D. 1054, the Crab Nebula, was sighted and documented by the Chinese, but nowhere mentioned in the West, where the Aristotelian notion of the immortality of stars still held sway.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Document Explode Held Immortality Mentioned Slight
Imagine a world in which there is no time. Only images.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Image Imagine Nom Time World
We often do not see what we do not expect to see.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Expect Not Often See
Nature is purposeless. Nature simply is. We may find nature beautiful or terrible, but those feelings are human constructions. Such utter and complete mindlessness is hard for us to accept.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Nature Purposeless Simply
The history of science can be viewed as the recasting of phenomena that were once thought to be accidents as phenomena that can be understood in terms of fundamental causes and principles.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Accident History Phenomena Recast Science View

Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way.

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Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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