Every essay – the subject matter of every essay – is ultimately about the essayist; him or herself. That ultimately, every essayist is writing about his or her view of the world.
ALAN LIGHTMANEach time is true, but the truths are not the same.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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You’ve made something grand, but it will be grander if it has feeling and beauty and harmony.
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The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in atime of pain or of joy.
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We have become disembodied. By being always somewhere else we are nowhere.
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The mother and father osprey stay together. It’s a monogamous relationship. And every summer they raise a new brood of children.
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The urge to discover, to invent, to know the unknown, seems so deeply human that we cannot imagine our history without it.
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I have a family and you know very well the time that that takes. That’s good time. I have a couple hobbies. I’m a runner and play tennis. In the summer my family and I uproot ourselves and go live in Maine for the summer.
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I go to live in Maine for the summer. Without computer, and without the telephone service we are mercifully without the faxes and e-mails.
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A life is a moment in season. A life is one snowfall. A life is one autumn day. A life is the delicate, rapid edge of a closing door’s shadow. A life is a brief movement of arms and of legs.
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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.
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Except for a God who sits down after the universe begins, all other gods conflict with the assumptions of science.
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The time-deaf are unable to speak what they know. For speech needs a sequence of words, spoken in time.
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That 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.
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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.
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One day I’m going to write a book about osprey. It has really gotten deep into my bloodstream. So when you ask what else I do, I feel like this is part of what I do….is to watch these birds.
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Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free. Over time, some have determined that the only way to live is to die. In death, a man or a woman is free of the weight of the past [and the future].
ALAN LIGHTMAN