For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable. While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.
ALAN LIGHTMANA world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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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.
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I also like the magic realist writers, such as Borges and Marquez, and feel that interesting truths can be learned about our world by exploring highly distorted worlds.
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So it’s really about two and a half months that I’ll feel like I can recover some silence in my life…which is so hard to find.
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That’s an exciting thing. In a class of fifteen there are usually two very good writers, equal to good student writers anywhere in the country. Those two make the class wonderful.
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They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.
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In a world without future, each parting of friends is a death. In a world without future, each loneliness is final.
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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.
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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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The urge to discover, to invent, to know the unknown, seems so deeply human that we cannot imagine our history without it.
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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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Another strand of my writing is the importance of the idea.
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No one ever expects poetry to sell…
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But rational thoughts lead only to rational thoughts, whereas irrational thoughts lead to new experiences.
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We feel such a strong connection to nature. But the relationship between nature and us is one-sided. There is no reciprocity. There is no mind on the other side of the wall.
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There is a place where time stands still.
ALAN LIGHTMAN