Life is a vessel of sadness, but is noble to live life and without time there is no life. Others disagree.
ALAN LIGHTMANAs 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?
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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I appreciate the idea of the individual person battling the society – which is true in all his books.
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It’s exciting having a student who is not used to expressing their emotional side and bringing that out in them and see that developing and helping to nurture that.
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There is a cultural diversity that’s very valuable, and it’s valuable to have different ways of looking at the world.
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Nature is purposeless. Nature simply is. We may find nature beautiful or terrible, but those feelings are human constructions. Such utter and complete mindlessness is hard for us to accept.
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In our constant search for meaning in this baffling and temporary existence, trapped as we are within our three pounds of neurons,
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Some make light of decisions, arguing that all possible decisions will occur. In such a world, how could one be responsible for his actions?
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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.”
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It is true that the arts at MIT don’t have the same amount of funding or same status as the sciences or engineering.
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Novels aren’t pedagogical instruments, or instructions in law or physics or any other discipline.
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The loved one will never take his arms from where they are now, will never give back the bracelet of memories, will never journey afar from his lover, will never place himself in danger of self-sacrifice.
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Faith is the ability to honor stillness at some moments, and at others to ride the passion and exuberance.
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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.
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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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That has been the great achievement of our age: to so thoroughly flood the planet with megabits that every image and fact has become a digitized disembodied nothingness. With magnificent determination,
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Time is visible in all places. Clock towers, wristwatches, church bells divide years into months, months into days, days into hours, hours into seconds, each increment of time marching after the other in perfect succession.
ALAN LIGHTMAN