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A good book changes for you every few years because you are in a different place in your own life. That’s a sign of a good novel.

Alan Lightman

The relationship between science and the humanities is two-way. Science changes our view of the world and our place in it. In the other direction, the humanities provide the store of ideas and images and language available to us in understanding the world.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Between Humanity Place Relationship Science Two Way World
“The Diagnosis” is by far my most ambitious book. I such great hopes for it… there was so much I wanted to do with the book. I was extremely insecure about it for several years.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Ambitious Book Diagnosis Far Great Hope Most
I was in New York and had lunch with Oliver Sachs and compared notes with him – he is someone I really like.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Compare Country Food Like Lunch Note Really Someone
A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Absolute Consolation Time World
For me, consciousness is the most interesting unsolved problem of science, and, in fact, we may never know what it is about a particular arrangement of neurons that gives rise to consciousness. Our consciousness.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Consciousness Interest Most Problem Science Unsolve
Children grow rapidly, forget the centuries-long embrace from their parents, which to them lasted but seconds. Children become adults, live far from their parents, live their own houses, learn ways of their own, suffer pain, grow old.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Century Children Embrace Forget Grow Last Parent Rapidly Second
What sense is there in continuing when one has seen the future?
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Continue Future See Sense
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Couple Every Like Lot Re-read Reread Some Try Year
The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Happy Joy One Pain Stuck Time Tragedy World
Writers read essays and serious thinkers and serious readers… that is a small population.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Essay Population Raed Serious Small Thinker Writer
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
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
If I were not a writer, I would spend more time doing the things that I am already doing, which include doing research in physics, teaching, and running a nonprofit organization with a mission to empower women in Cambodia.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Already Doing Done Money More Spend Thing Time Water
I think once we stop asking questions like “what is the age of the universe,” or “how are the instructions of DNA carried out on a microscopic level,” once we stop asking questions like that, we’re dead.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Dead Microscopic Question Stop Universe
I think all tragedies are best told with some humor. You have to relieve the darkness to let the reader get through it. Also, that life has happiness and sadness mixed together.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Humor Some Think Told Tragedy
As I understand it, a universe is a … well, a totality. A universe is everything that is, as far as the inside of the thing.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Inside Out Thing Total Understand Universe

A good book changes for you every few years because you are in a different place in your own life. That’s a sign of a good novel.

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A good book changes for you every few years because you are in a different place in your own life. That’s a sign of a good novel.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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