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So many little lives, amounting to nothing. I ask you: What is infinity multiplied by zero? It is hardly worth our discussion.

Alan Lightman

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
Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Alone Each Get Person Stuck Time
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
Illuminated 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 LIGHTMAN

Canyon Chemical Diminish Faint Fireflies Glow Light More Red Sexual
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
Our species has advanced from Stone Age to Industrial Revolution to Digital Emptiness. We’ve become weightless, in the bad sense of the word.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Advance Imagination Revolution Sense Species World
Imagine a world in which there is no time. Only images.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Image Imagine Nom Time World
The exploding star of A.D. 1054, the Crab Nebula, was sighted and documented by the Chinese, but nowhere mentioned in the West, where the Aristotelian notion of the immortality of stars still held sway.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Document Explode Held Immortality Mentioned Slight
A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Absolute Consolation Time World
Will never fail to show his love, will never become jealous, will never fall in love with someone else, will never lose the passion of this instant of time.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Fall Instant Jealousy Love Passion Someone Time
Events, once happened, lose reality, alter with a glance, a storm, a night. In time, the past never happened. But who could know? Who could know that the past is not as solid as this instant.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Decision Event Glance Happen Lose Occur Reality
Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free. Over time, some have determined that the only way to live is to die. In death, a man or a woman is free of the weight of the past [and the future].
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Cost Determine Free Future Immortality No Person Such Whole Woman
The target of power is more interesting than its quantity.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Interest More Power Quantity Target
Each future moves in a different direction of time. Each future is real.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Different Direction Each Future Move Time
You say, “Something important really happened here. I really had hold of something I was visited by the muse.” And that’s enough to make you continue the months and years to finish the whole book.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Happened Important Muse Really Something Visit
If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Ambition Duffer Hold Person Unknowingly
Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who can say which, in an acausal world?
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Actual Cosmo Irrational Perhaps Rational World
In the coffee houses, in the government buildings, in boats of Lake Geneva, people look at their watches and take refuge in time.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Boat Building Coffee Government House Look Refuge Time Watch
In fiction writing ideas have to be handled extremely carefully.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Carefully Extremely Fiction Handle Idea Write
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 LIGHTMAN

Inside Out Thing Total Understand Universe
Whenever Obama uses subtleties in discussing a complex issue, he gets creamed.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Complex Cream Discuss Issue President Subtleties
Children grow rapidly, forget the centuries-long embrace from their parents, which to them lasted but seconds. Children become adults, live far from their parents, live their own houses, learn ways of their own, suffer pain, grow old.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Century Children Embrace Forget Grow Last Parent Rapidly Second
Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Acid Bit Cerebellum More Sadness Transfix
It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Glance Meaning Moment Speak Spoken World
In 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

Artist Joyful Life Music Novel Paint Unpredictability World
I certainly believe there are forces bigger than ourselves, and that we should be searching, individually, for meaning in our lives. But I don’t believe there’s a supreme being, an intelligence that created everything.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Believe Create Everything Individual Meaning Ourselves Search Supreme
In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time.” “They do not keep clocks in their houses. Instead, they listen to their heartbeats. They feel the rhythms of their moods and desires.”
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Body Clock House Keep Mechanical Time Two World

So many little lives, amounting to nothing. I ask you: What is infinity multiplied by zero? It is hardly worth our discussion.

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So many little lives, amounting to nothing. I ask you: What is infinity multiplied by zero? It is hardly worth our discussion.

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Popular Authors

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