You’ve made something grand, but it will be grander if it has feeling and beauty and harmony.
ALAN LIGHTMANIn fiction writing, I would say there are several different strands that have been woven through my own writing, and each influenced by a different group of writers.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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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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We’ve lost our way, we have lost our centeredness.
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There are important differences which should be preserved, and in trying to do away with those differences we would lose something the same way as if we tried to make all religions one religion or all races one race.
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I think what gets you through a small writing project, is just one burst of inspiration.
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Where are the one billion people who lived and breathed in the year 1800, only two short centuries ago?
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It’s a flow of chemicals and electrical currents, and it developed over millions of years in the process of evolution to aid in the procreation of the species.
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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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If you over-plot your book you strangle your characters. Your characters have to have enough freedom and life to be able to surprise you.
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And if we can’t unplug from that machine, eventually we’re going to become mindless.
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A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation.
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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.
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Life is a vessel of sadness, but is noble to live life and without time there is no life. Others disagree.
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All beliefs not in such contradiction may be considered as faith. Whether faith in a particular belief is beneficial or not is another matter.
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I love the fact publishers are still publishing unprofitable material. It’s a challenge to the powers that be. It’s saying there is a real literature in this country and we will keep publishing it.
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One cannot walk down an avenue, converse with a friend, enter a building, browse beneath the sandstone arches of an old arcade without meeting an instrument of time.
ALAN LIGHTMAN