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I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jose Saramago, Michael Bulgakov, and Salman Rushdie.

Alan Lightman

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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Consider Essayist Fiction Myself Writer
I’m still happy with the way Einstein’s Dreams came out. That book came out of a single inspiration. I really felt like I was not creating the words, that I was hearing the words.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Came Dream Happy Inspiration Out Person Single Still Way
In this world, time has three dimensions, like space.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Dimension Space Three Time World
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
No one ever expects poetry to sell…
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Ever Expert Poetry Sell
After a while the car becomes just another thing that he owns. Moreover, when his neighbor next door buys two cars, in an instant our man feels wretchedly poor and deprived.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Become Buy Car Deprive Door Feel Man Moreover Neighbour Poor
Time is a rigid, bonelike structure, extending infinitely ahead and behind, fossilizing the future as well as the past.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Ahead Bonelike Extend Fossilize Future Infinitely Past Rigid Structure Time Well
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.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Consciousness Interest Most Problem Science Unsolve
With a background in science I am extremely interested in the meeting ground of science, theology, and philosophy, especially the ethical questions at the border of science and theology.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Background Border Especially Ground Meet Philosophy Question Science Theology
Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Complete Different Every Reader Sense Something Way
In a world in which time is a circle, every handshake, every kiss, every birth, every word, will be repeated precisely.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Birth Circle Every Handshake Kiss Precise Repeat Time Word World
Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Alone Each Get Person Stuck Time
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
Every essay – the subject matter of every essay – is ultimately about the essayist; him or herself. That ultimately, every essayist is writing about his or her view of the world.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Essay Every Him Himself Matter Subject Ultimate
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
A life is a moment in season. A life is one snowfall. A life is one autumn day. A life is the delicate, rapid edge of a closing door’s shadow. A life is a brief movement of arms and of legs.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Autumn Day Life Moment One Season Snowfall
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
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
I think once we stop asking questions like “what is the age of the universe,” or “how are the instructions of DNA carried out on a microscopic level,” once we stop asking questions like that, we’re dead.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Dead Microscopic Question Stop Universe
In fiction writing ideas have to be handled extremely carefully.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Carefully Extremely Fiction Handle Idea Write
Not only will two different readers get something different but so will a single reader at different points in his life.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Different Life Point Reader Singer Something
For my students who are trying to learn the craft of writing in a writing class – contemporary literature is what’s most useful.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Class Contemporary Craft Learn Literature Mist Student Try Useful Write
If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Ambition Hold Know Person Slowly Suffer
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,
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Achievement Age Fact Flood Great Image Megabit Planet So Throughout
I have a number of vague ideas where I just have the core or kernel of the idea. I feel like I need some time for my mind to fill up again. I feel empty. Right now.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Core Idea Kernel Number Vague
As both a scientist and a humanist myself, I have struggled to understand different claims to knowledge, and I have eventually come to a formulation of the kind of religious belief that would, in my view, be compatible with science.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Humanist Myself Scientific
All beliefs not in such contradiction may be considered as faith. Whether faith in a particular belief is beneficial or not is another matter.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Belief Beneficial Consider Contradiction Faith Matter

I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jose Saramago, Michael Bulgakov, and Salman Rushdie.

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Popular Authors

I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jose Saramago, Michael Bulgakov, and Salman Rushdie.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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