Oh, love is very much a physical thing…. I realize that it’s very complicated, and I’m sure it can’t be traced to individual neurons and hormones, but I think it’s very much a physiological sensation that takes place in the brain.
ALAN LIGHTMANTo that end, I believe that we should make room for both spiritual atheists and thinking believers.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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Faith is the ability to honor stillness at some moments, and at others to ride the passion and exuberance.
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To that end, I believe that we should make room for both spiritual atheists and thinking believers.
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Writers read essays and serious thinkers and serious readers… that is a small population.
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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.
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All of these things can occur with or without God. I do not believe in the existence of God, but I consider myself a spiritual person in the manner I have just described. I call myself a spiritual atheist. I would imagine that many people are spiritual atheists.
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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.
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A 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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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Others hold that each decision must be considered and committed to, that without commitment there is chaos. Such people are content to live in contradictory worlds, so long as they know the reason for each.
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If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly.
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The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present.
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I think e-mail is representative of our fast food mentality in the United States, where everything has gotten faster and faster, and we’re required to respond to inputs more quickly with less time for thought and reflection.
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