In a world in which time is a circle, every handshake, every kiss, every birth, every word, will be repeated precisely.
ALAN LIGHTMANA person who cannot imagine the future is a person who cannot contemplate the results of his actions. Some are thus paralyzed into inaction.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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I consider myself an essayist and a fiction writer. In the essays, I certainly have been influenced by some of the leading science essayists. Like Loren Eiseley, Stephen Jay Gould, Lewis Thomas.
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In fiction writing, I would say there are several different strands that have been woven through my own writing, and each influenced by a different group of writers.
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All writers have roots they draw from – travel, work, family. My roots are in science and it is fertile ground for fiction.
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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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If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly.
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There are the alpha waves in the brain; another clock is the heart. And all the while tick the mysterious, ruthless clocks that regulate aging.
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Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.
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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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You can’t let your characters just be mouthpieces for your ideas. They have to live and breathe on their own.
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I think that the scienti?c way of looking at the world, and the humanistic way of looking at the world are complementary.
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When I used to play golf. It’s a terrible miserable game. It’s incredibly frustrating. In 18 holes you make 150 horrible shots off in the woods, in the water…
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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.
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I have a family and you know very well the time that that takes. That’s good time. I have a couple hobbies. I’m a runner and play tennis. In the summer my family and I uproot ourselves and go live in Maine for the summer.
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The world is moving faster and faster, but where are we going?
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The urge to discover, to invent, to know the unknown, seems so deeply human that we cannot imagine our history without it.
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It’s the Platonic philosophy in The Republic that philosophers should lead the country.
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I re-read a lot of books that I like a lot. There are some books that I try to reread every couple of years. A good book changes for you every few years because you are in a different place in your own life.
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I am spellbound by the plays of Shakespeare. And I am spellbound by the second law of thermodynamics.
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Who would fare better in this world of fitful time? Those who have seen the future and live only one life? Or those who have not seen the future and wait to live life? Or those who deny the future and live two lives?
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Just as an object may move in three perpendicular directions, corresponding to horizontal, vertical, and longitudinal, so an object may participate in three perpendicular futures.
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Making that book into a film is going to be quite a challenge.
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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.
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Their predictions become postdictions- Their equations become justifications, their logic, illogic.
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The argument goes that if the past has uncertain effect on the present, there is no need to dwell on the past.
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All of these things can occur with or without God. I do not believe in the existence of God, but I consider myself a spiritual person in the manner I have just described. I call myself a spiritual atheist. I would imagine that many people are spiritual atheists.
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For me, consciousness is the most interesting unsolved problem of science, and, in fact, we may never know what it is about a particular arrangement of neurons that gives rise to consciousness. Our consciousness.
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