All beliefs not in such contradiction may be considered as faith. Whether faith in a particular belief is beneficial or not is another matter.
ALAN LIGHTMANBody time flows at its own variable rate, oblivious to the most precise hydrogen master clocks in the laboratory. In fact, the human body contains its own exquisite time-pieces, all with their separate rhythms.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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I am spellbound by the plays of Shakespeare. And I am spellbound by the second law of thermodynamics.
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In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time.
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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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We try to impose order, both in our minds and in our conceptions of external reality.
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Writers read essays and serious thinkers and serious readers… that is a small population.
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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.
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I should have written books instead of reading them.
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If you over-plot your book you strangle your characters. Your characters have to have enough freedom and life to be able to surprise you.
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Life is a vessel of sadness, but is noble to live life and without time there is no life. Others disagree.
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In a world in which time is a circle, every handshake, every kiss, every birth, every word, will be repeated precisely.
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Others hold that each decision must be considered and committed to, that without commitment there is chaos. Such people are content to live in contradictory worlds, so long as they know the reason for each.
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To that end, I believe that we should make room for both spiritual atheists and thinking believers.
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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.
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Unfortunately, public debates do not have much room for subtlety. The audience wants a quick thrust at your opponent, not a slow and convoluted series of moves.
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Authenticity and sincerity were the most important unifying principles of all these apparently different essays.
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Like the air we breathe or like the passage of time, is central to our existence as intelligent beings.
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When I used to play golf. It’s a terrible miserable game. It’s incredibly frustrating. In 18 holes you make 150 horrible shots off in the woods, in the water…
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I think what gets you through a small writing project, is just one burst of inspiration.
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If you told a story that was all darkness, it wouldn’t be real.
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I would think that you are more fluent with the rational. It has its appeal. But the irrational permits a greater exercise of … shall we say, power.
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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?
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The mother and father osprey stay together. It’s a monogamous relationship. And every summer they raise a new brood of children.
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The world is moving faster and faster, but where are we going?
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The great ideas in science, like the Cro-Magnon paintings and the plays of Shakespeare, are part of our cultural heritage.
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The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.
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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