An unusual counterpoint between personal history and the history of a young nation. Haunting, powerful, and beautifully written.
ALAN LIGHTMANA book, especially a longer book, it’s a different kind of force that pushes you through it. It’s a vision of the whole thing.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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One cannot walk down an avenue, converse with a friend, enter a building, browse beneath the sandstone arches of an old arcade without meeting an instrument of time.
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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.
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We’ve lost our way, we have lost our centeredness.
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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 sometimes hard to tell what is real. We often invent what isn’t there. Or ignore what is.
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He hopes that she loves him in return. Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back?
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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.
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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.
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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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I consider myself a spiritual atheist.
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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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I still will sit down at the piano and play when I am wrestling with something emotionally or just want to move into the musical world.
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I’m humbled and enormously grateful to be connected to [Franz] Kafka in a any way. He is one of the writers I admire. I think he has been a big influence on me.
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I would do something and let it sit for three months… just brood about and decide I needed to slightly change something here or there. Or one character wasn’t quite right. But I think everybody goes through this.
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We walk from room to room, look into the room that is lit, the present moment, then walk on. We do not know the rooms ahead, but we know we cannot change them. We are spectators of our lives.
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Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.
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The world is moving faster and faster, but where are we going?
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In fiction writing ideas have to be handled extremely carefully.
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Rather, each act is an island in time, to be judged on its own. … It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity.
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It’s not necessarily a large number of people that affect the culture. You don’t count the number of influential voices, you weigh them. A hundred people can affect the culture.
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Time is visible in all places. Clock towers, wristwatches, church bells divide years into months, months into days, days into hours, hours into seconds, each increment of time marching after the other in perfect succession.
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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?
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And if we can’t unplug from that machine, eventually we’re going to become mindless.
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I believe that we need to slow down.
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I re-read a lot of books that I like a lot. There are some books that I try to reread every couple of years. A good book changes for you every few years because you are in a different place in your own life.
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If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.
ALAN LIGHTMAN