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Just didn’t know whether I would finish the book much less for it to come close to what I intended. I think that for any novel you never know exactly how the book is going to turn out…

Alan Lightman

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
Order is the law of nature, the universal trend, the cosmic direction. If time is an arrow, that arrow points toward order.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Law Nature Order
So many little lives, amounting to nothing. I ask you: What is infinity multiplied by zero? It is hardly worth our discussion.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Amount Little Live Many Nothing So
I should have written books instead of reading them.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Instead Read Should Write
Thoughts are no more than electrical surges in the brain.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Brain Electrical More Surge
A writer is someone who has a one-man tent in the desert and occasionally he sees the footprint of an other writer – in the form of a review or something.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Desert Footprint Man Occasion One Someone Something Then Writer
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

Clock Crisp First Interval Invent Make Mechanical Time
We don’t have the time, literally, to think during the day. To listen to ourselves think. To think about where we are going, who we are, what’s important.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

During Important Listen Ourselves Thing Time
We often do not see what we do not expect to see.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Expect Not Often See
It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Every Just Moment Speak Spoken Word World
And if the present has little effect on the future, present actions need not be weighed for their consequence.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Consequence Effect Future Little Presence Present Weight
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
You say, “Something important really happened here. I really had hold of something I was visited by the muse.” And that’s enough to make you continue the months and years to finish the whole book.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Happened Important Muse Really Something Visit
Just as an object may move in three perpendicular directions, corresponding to horizontal, vertical, and longitudinal, so an object may participate in three perpendicular futures.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Correspond Direction Future Horizontal Longitudinal Object Participate Perpendicular Vertical
In fiction writing ideas have to be handled extremely carefully.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Carefully Extremely Fiction Handle Idea Write
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

Just didn’t know whether I would finish the book much less for it to come close to what I intended. I think that for any novel you never know exactly how the book is going to turn out…

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Just didn’t know whether I would finish the book much less for it to come close to what I intended. I think that for any novel you never know exactly how the book is going to turn out…

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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