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.
ALAN LIGHTMANLike the air we breathe or like the passage of time, is central to our existence as intelligent beings.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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They came back to the nest in the middle of April. They take separate vacations in the winter – the mother and father.
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I think Joe Leiberman has been one of the leaders of the country… people have such a broad respect for him as a moral force.
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We often do not see what we do not expect to see.
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A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation. For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable.
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Human beings consider themselves satisfied only compared to some other condition.
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If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly.
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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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And of course, that makes it frightening to start a new book because you can’t really depend upon what you’ve done with previous books.
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All writers have roots they draw from – travel, work, family. My roots are in science and it is fertile ground for fiction.
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Time is a rigid, bonelike structure, extending infinitely ahead and behind, fossilizing the future as well as the past.
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Novels aren’t pedagogical instruments, or instructions in law or physics or any other discipline.
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Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.
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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.
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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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There is a place where time stands still.
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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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In this world, time has three dimensions, like space.
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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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If you think about fiction writing as a spectrum, where at one end of the spectrum in the infrared, are the story tellers, and the people for whom creation of wonderful characters and telling a good story is the most important thing.
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I have too many friends who tell me that they spend the first hour of every morning going through their e-mail messages. I’d like to use my time more carefully.
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I think it is always a long shot getting a book made into a film.
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We walk from room to room, look into the room that is lit, the present moment, then walk on. We do not know the rooms ahead, but we know we cannot change them. We are spectators of our lives.
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I consider myself a spiritual atheist.
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Each future moves in a different direction of time. Each future is real.
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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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We’re plugged in 24 hours a day now. We’re all part of one big machine, whether we are conscious of that or not.
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