The first is as rigid and metallic as a massive pendulum of iron that swings back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
ALAN LIGHTMANThe time-deaf are unable to speak what they know. For speech needs a sequence of words, spoken in time.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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We feel such a strong connection to nature. But the relationship between nature and us is one-sided. There is no reciprocity. There is no mind on the other side of the wall.
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They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.
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In a world without future, each parting of friends is a death. In a world without future, each loneliness is final.
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Order is the law of nature, the universal trend, the cosmic direction. If time is an arrow, that arrow points toward order.
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The second squirms and wriggles like a bluefish in a bay. The first is unyielding, predetermined. The second makes up its mind as it goes along.
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My writings are an exploration, and I think a lot of writers would tell you this, but in writing, you’re not simply putting down things that are already known to you. You’re actually discovering in the writing process, you’re actually creating knowledge.
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Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.
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You make one good shot and it brings you back the next time. With writing a long book there has to be at least one bit that has some magic in it that you can go back to.
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But rational thoughts lead only to rational thoughts, whereas irrational thoughts lead to new experiences.
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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.
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I believe that we need to slow down.
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I love the fact publishers are still publishing unprofitable material. It’s a challenge to the powers that be. It’s saying there is a real literature in this country and we will keep publishing it.
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I think e-mail is representative of our fast food mentality in the United States, where everything has gotten faster and faster, and we’re required to respond to inputs more quickly with less time for thought and reflection.
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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.
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In a world in which time is a circle, every handshake, every kiss, every birth, every word, will be repeated precisely.
ALAN LIGHTMAN