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Time is a rigid, bonelike structure, extending infinitely ahead and behind, fossilizing the future as well as the past.

Alan Lightman

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
Thoughts are no more than electrical surges in the brain.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Brain Electrical More Surge
I’ve taken a philosophical position on e-mail. Although I think it’s a wonderful communication technology, and it has a lot of good uses, it is abused quite a lot.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

E-mail Philosophy Position Taken
Time is the clarity for seeing right and wrong.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Clarity Right See Wrong
Music is, of course, a universal emotional experience, cutting across cultures and languages. I studied piano for ten years as a child and consider that experience one of the most valuable in my life.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Across Course Culture Cut Emotional Experience Language Music
In restaurants, walking, they have cell phones clamped to their to heads.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Cell Clamp Head Phone Restaurant Walk
Their predictions become postdictions- Their equations become justifications, their logic, illogic.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Illogic Justification Logic Postdiction Prediction
I was in New York and had lunch with Oliver Sachs and compared notes with him – he is someone I really like.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Compare Country Food Like Lunch Note Really Someone
It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Impulse Sincerity World
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
And beyond any particular clock, a vast scaffold of time, stretching across the universe, lays down the law of time equally for all.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Beyond Down Equally Law Particular Stretch
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Been Country Leader People Think
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

E-mail First Friend Gone Hours Every Many Message Moring Spend Tell Through Too
The urge to discover, to invent, to know the unknown, seems so deeply human that we cannot imagine our history without it.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Dep Discover History Human Imagine Invent Know Seem Unknown Urge
I think all tragedies are best told with some humor. You have to relieve the darkness to let the reader get through it. Also, that life has happiness and sadness mixed together.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Humor Some Think Told Tragedy
I think it is always a long shot getting a book made into a film.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Always Book Film Long Made Think

Time is a rigid, bonelike structure, extending infinitely ahead and behind, fossilizing the future as well as the past.

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Time is a rigid, bonelike structure, extending infinitely ahead and behind, fossilizing the future as well as the past.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Alan Lightman Quotes