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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

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
It’s the Platonic philosophy in The Republic that philosophers should lead the country.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Country Lead Philosophy Republic
There is a place where time stands still.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Place Stand Still Time
In restaurants, walking, they have cell phones clamped to their to heads.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Cell Clamp Head Phone Restaurant Walk
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
In a world without future, each laugh is the last laugh. In a world without future, beyond the present lies nothingness, and people cling to the present as if hanging from a cliff.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Beyond Cliff Future Hang Laugh Nothingness Present
That’s an exciting thing. In a class of fifteen there are usually two very good writers, equal to good student writers anywhere in the country. Those two make the class wonderful.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Anywhere Class Equal Good Excite Student Thing Wonderful Writer
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
A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Absolute Consolation Time World
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
In a world of fixed future, life is an infinite corridor of rooms, one room lit at each moment, the next room dark but prepared.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Corridor Dark Each Fixed Infinite Life Moment Next Prepare Room World
One day I’m going to write a book about osprey. It has really gotten deep into my bloodstream. So when you ask what else I do, I feel like this is part of what I do….is to watch these birds.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Bloodstream Book Day Deep Gom Got One Osprey Real Write
Writers read essays and serious thinkers and serious readers… that is a small population.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Essay Population Raed Serious Small Thinker Writer
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Every Just Moment Speak Spoken Word World
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
And since the human mind has a degree of infinity and imagination unlikely to be matched by a machine for a very, very long time, I don’t think that we will become the machines of the machines.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Human Imagination Machine Match Mind Since Technology Unlikely

Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who can say which, in an acausal world?

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Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who can say which, in an acausal world?

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Alan Lightman Quotes