Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.
ALAN LIGHTMANEach person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.
ALAN LIGHTMANIn the coffee houses, in the government buildings, in boats of Lake Geneva, people look at their watches and take refuge in time.
ALAN LIGHTMANIlluminated by only the most feeble red light, for light is diminished to almost nothing at the center of time, its vibrations slowed to echoes in vast canyons, its intensity reduced to the faint glow of fireflies.
ALAN LIGHTMANI picked such seemingly disparate essays, I thought it was important to say what was the guiding principle in the selection rather than focus on any one essay.
ALAN LIGHTMANThe tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in atime of pain or of joy.
ALAN LIGHTMANOrder is the law of nature, the universal trend, the cosmic direction. If time is an arrow, that arrow points toward order.
ALAN LIGHTMANA 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 LIGHTMANI am spellbound by the plays of Shakespeare. And I am spellbound by the second law of thermodynamics.
ALAN LIGHTMANI believe that we need to slow down.
ALAN LIGHTMANThere is a cultural diversity that’s very valuable, and it’s valuable to have different ways of looking at the world.
ALAN LIGHTMANThat someone else was speaking the words to me and I was just writing them down. It was a very strange experience. That can happen with a short book. I don’t think it could happen with a long book.
ALAN LIGHTMANIt’s the Platonic philosophy in The Republic that philosophers should lead the country.
ALAN LIGHTMANA person who cannot imagine the future is a person who cannot contemplate the results of his actions. Some are thus paralyzed into inaction.
ALAN LIGHTMANLife is a vessel of sadness, but is noble to live life and without time there is no life. Others disagree.
ALAN LIGHTMANI appreciate the idea of the individual person battling the society – which is true in all his books.
ALAN LIGHTMANThey came back to the nest in the middle of April. They take separate vacations in the winter – the mother and father.
ALAN LIGHTMAN