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No one knows the nature of God, or even if God exists. In a sense, all of our religions are literary works of the imagination.

Alan Lightman

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

Book Complete Different Reader Sense Something Way
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
A novel has to be an emotional experience, a trip of the imagination, and because science has raised so many issues that concern and affect humans, it’s a good starting place for me.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Emotion Experience Good Imagination Novel Science Start
As a scientist, I don’t believe science will ever discover whether God exists. Nor do I believe religion will ever prove it.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Belive Discover Ever Exist God Prove Religion Scientist
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Character Pilot Strangle
I reached for some principle that had been subconscious in me and lifted it into consciousness.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Lift Principle Reach Some Subconscious
It’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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Curiosity Fundamental Intellectual Journey Place Think
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
it is sometimes hard to tell what is real. We often invent what isn’t there. Or ignore what is.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Hard Ignore Invent Real Sometimes Tell There
There are the alpha waves in the brain; another clock is the heart. And all the while tick the mysterious, ruthless clocks that regulate aging.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Alpha Another Brain Clock Heart Mysterious Ruthless Tick Wave
And of course, that makes it frightening to start a new book because you can’t really depend upon what you’ve done with previous books.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Course Depend Done Frighten Make Previous
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
In a world without future, each moment is the end of the world.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Each Moment Music World
Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions happen without the slightest consideration for human inhabitants.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Care Evidence Kinship Nature Oneness Strongly Suggest Tornadoes
I have a number of vague ideas where I just have the core or kernel of the idea. I feel like I need some time for my mind to fill up again. I feel empty. Right now.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Core Idea Kernel Number Vague
What I am very disturbed about is this trend of everything happening faster and faster and faster and there being more and more general noise in the world, and less and less time for quiet reflection on who we are, and where we’re going.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Disturb Everything Faster Happen Less Quiet World

No one knows the nature of God, or even if God exists. In a sense, all of our religions are literary works of the imagination.

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No one knows the nature of God, or even if God exists. In a sense, all of our religions are literary works of the imagination.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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