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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

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
Novels aren’t pedagogical instruments, or instructions in law or physics or any other discipline.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Discipline Instruction Instrument Law Novel Other Pedagogical Physics
No one ever expects poetry to sell…
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Ever Expert Poetry Sell
Writers are a loosely knit community – community is an overstated word. Writers don’t see each other very much.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Community Lose Overstate Word Writer
Just didn’t know whether I would finish the book much less for it to come close to what I intended. I think that for any novel you never know exactly how the book is going to turn out…
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Close Come Exact Intend Novel Think
When the first mechanical clocks were invented, marking off time in crisp, regular intervals, it must have surprised people to discover that time flowed outside their own mental and physiological processes.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Clock Crisp First Interval Invent Make Mechanical Time
Their predictions become postdictions- Their equations become justifications, their logic, illogic.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Illogic Justification Logic Postdiction Prediction
If you think about fiction writing as a spectrum, where at one end of the spectrum in the infrared, are the story tellers, and the people for whom creation of wonderful characters and telling a good story is the most important thing.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Character Creation Fiction Infrared Tell Think Wonderful
Everyone shares the same fate.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Everyone Fate Same Share
A person who cannot imagine the future is a person who cannot contemplate the results of his actions. Some are thus paralyzed into inaction.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Action Contemplate Future Imagine Person Result
We have a house on a very tiny island in Maine. Which is really my spiritual center. We’ve been going there for ten years, and it has no ferry service, no bridges, no telephone service. It’s really isolated.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Bridge Ferry Island Really Service Spiritual Telephone
I reached for some principle that had been subconscious in me and lifted it into consciousness.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Lift Principle Reach Some Subconscious
The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in atime of pain or of joy.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Happy Joy No One Pain Stuck Time Tragedy World
Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Acid Bit Cerebellum More Sadness Transfix
That’s the fine balance of a fiction writer…to be able to give your characters enough freedom to surprise you and yet still maintain some kind of artistic control.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Artistic Balance Character Control Fiction Fine Freedom Maintain Surprise Writer
Some say it is best not to go near the center of time.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Best Center Go Near Not Say Some Time

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?

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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?

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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