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Not only will two different readers get something different but so will a single reader at different points in his life.

Alan Lightman

While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Ahead Back Broot Look People Skip Time
Each future moves in a different direction of time. Each future is real.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Different Direction Each Future Move Time
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Character Pilot Strangle
As human beings, don’t we need questions without answers as well as questions with answers, questions that we might someday answer and questions that we can never answer?
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Answer Human Being might Need Question Someday Well
Franz Kafka is an idea person. His books begin and end in ideas. Ideas have always been important to me in my writing.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Always Been Begin Book End I Idea People Person Portrait Write
If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Ambition Hold Know Person Slowly Suffer
A good book changes for you every few years because you are in a different place in your own life. That’s a sign of a good novel.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Change Different Every Few Good Life Own Place Year
The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Alone Everyone Tragedy World
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Exist God Know Nature Sense
Their predictions become postdictions- Their equations become justifications, their logic, illogic.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Illogic Justification Logic Postdiction Prediction
Order is the law of nature, the universal trend, the cosmic direction. If time is an arrow, that arrow points toward order.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Law Nature Order
I wouldn’t overall say that “The Diagnosis” is a funny book. I would say that it has comic moments. It’s a modern tragedy.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Comic Diagnosis Funny Modern Overall Tragedy
We try to connect. We try to find truth. We dream and we hope. And underneath all of these strivings, we are haunted by the suspicion that what we see and understand of the world is only a tiny piece of the whole.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Connect Dream Haunt Hope Thing Tiny Try Underneath Understand Whole World
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Bloodstream Book Day Deep Gom Got One Osprey Real Write
It is true that the arts at MIT don’t have the same amount of funding or same status as the sciences or engineering.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Amount Art Engineer Fund Same Science Status True
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Every Just Moment Speak Spoken Word World

Not only will two different readers get something different but so will a single reader at different points in his life.

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Not only will two different readers get something different but so will a single reader at different points in his life.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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