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“The Diagnosis” is by far my most ambitious book. I such great hopes for it… there was so much I wanted to do with the book. I was extremely insecure about it for several years.

Alan Lightman

I would think that you are more fluent with the rational. It has its appeal. But the irrational permits a greater exercise of … shall we say, power.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Body Fluent Time Traditional Two World
The urge to discover, to invent, to know the unknown, seems so deeply human that we cannot imagine our history without it.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Dep Discover History Human Imagine Invent Know Seem Unknown Urge
Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Bak Bend Circle Itself Suppose Time
And if we can’t unplug from that machine, eventually we’re going to become mindless.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Become Eventually Go Machine Mindless Unplug
I would bet most people don’t have thirty minutes in a day where they can just sit down and think. Or maybe they don’t have to be sitting, they can be walking.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Down Maybe Minute People Sit Think
We often do not see what we do not expect to see.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Expect Often See
Science is an intellectual journey, and to me, it’s not the destination.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Destination Intellectual Journey Science
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
Each future moves in a different direction of time. Each future is real.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Different Direction Each Future Move Time
To that end, I believe that we should make room for both spiritual atheists and thinking believers.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Atheist Belief Both End Room Spiritual Think
The mother and father osprey stay together. It’s a monogamous relationship. And every summer they raise a new brood of children.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Brood Children Father Monogamous Mother Osprey Summer Through Watch
The history of science can be viewed as the recasting of phenomena that were once thought to be accidents as phenomena that can be understood in terms of fundamental causes and principles.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Accident History Phenomena Recast Science View
One metaphor for how we are living is that you see so may people with cell phones.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Cell How Live Metaphor One People Phone
I think all tragedies are best told with some humor. You have to relieve the darkness to let the reader get through it. Also, that life has happiness and sadness mixed together.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Humor Some Think Told Tragedy
We try to connect. We try to find truth. We dream and we hope. And underneath all of these strivings, we are haunted by the suspicion that what we see and understand of the world is only a tiny piece of the whole.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Connect Dream Haunt Hope Thing Tiny Try Underneath Understand Whole 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

“The Diagnosis” is by far my most ambitious book. I such great hopes for it… there was so much I wanted to do with the book. I was extremely insecure about it for several years.

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“The Diagnosis” is by far my most ambitious book. I such great hopes for it… there was so much I wanted to do with the book. I was extremely insecure about it for several years.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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