We try to impose order, both in our minds and in our conceptions of external reality.
ALAN LIGHTMANWe try to impose order, both in our minds and in our conceptions of external reality.
ALAN LIGHTMANA 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.
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 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.
ALAN LIGHTMANA 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.
ALAN LIGHTMANRather, each act is an island in time, to be judged on its own. … It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity.
ALAN LIGHTMANThe world is moving faster and faster, but where are we going?
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 LIGHTMANI 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.
ALAN LIGHTMANWe often do not see what we do not expect to see.
ALAN LIGHTMANOriginality 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.
ALAN LIGHTMANThe time-deaf are unable to speak what they know. For speech needs a sequence of words, spoken in time.
ALAN LIGHTMANFaith is the ability to honor stillness at some moments, and at others to ride the passion and exuberance.
ALAN LIGHTMANOthers 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.
ALAN LIGHTMANI also like the magic realist writers, such as Borges and Marquez, and feel that interesting truths can be learned about our world by exploring highly distorted worlds.
ALAN LIGHTMANIn this world, artists are joyous. Unpredictability is the life of their paintings, their music, their novels. They delight in events not forecasted, happenings without explanation, retrospective.
ALAN LIGHTMAN