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The time-deaf are unable to speak what they know. For speech needs a sequence of words, spoken in time.

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
We have a house on a very tiny island in Maine. Which is really my spiritual center. We’ve been going there for ten years, and it has no ferry service, no bridges, no telephone service. It’s really isolated.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Bridge Ferry Island Really Service Spiritual Telephone
I have no opposition at all to technology. I think technology is a wonderful thing that has to be used thoughtfully, and we can’t just assume that every bit of new technology improvesthe quality of life; it’s really in how the technology is used.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Opposition Technology Thing Think Use Wonderful
For it is only habit and memory that dulls the physical passion. Without memory, each night is the first night, each morning is the first morning, each kiss and touch are the first.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Dull Habit Memory Only Passion Physical
I wouldn’t overall say that “The Diagnosis” is a funny book. I would say that it has comic moments. It’s a modern tragedy.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Comic Diagnosis Funny Modern Overall Tragedy
Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Alone Each Get Person Stuck Time
Each time is true, but the truths are not the same.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Each Same Time True Truth
So many little lives, amounting to nothing. I ask you: What is infinity multiplied by zero? It is hardly worth our discussion.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Amount Little Live Many Nothing So
What I am very disturbed about is this trend of everything happening faster and faster and faster and there being more and more general noise in the world, and less and less time for quiet reflection on who we are, and where we’re going.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Disturb Everything Faster Happen Less Quiet World
In short, the body is a machine, subject to the same laws of electricity and mechanics as an electron or clock.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Body Clock Electricity Future Law Machine Person Same Short
Oh, love is very much a physical thing…. I realize that it’s very complicated, and I’m sure it can’t be traced to individual neurons and hormones, but I think it’s very much a physiological sensation that takes place in the brain.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Love Much Physical Thing
You can’t let your characters just be mouthpieces for your ideas. They have to live and breathe on their own.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Breathe Character Idea Just Live Mouthpiece Own
In this world, time has three dimensions, like space.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Dimension Space Three Time World
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
“The Diagnosis” had ten drafts of very significant changing, where I went through the whole book, wholesale and changed everything. Then the last year or so it was making small changes.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Book Change Diagnosis Draft Significant Ten Through Whole Wholesale
The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.
ALAN LIGHTMAN

Happy Joy One Pain Stuck Time Tragedy World

The time-deaf are unable to speak what they know. For speech needs a sequence of words, spoken in time.

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The time-deaf are unable to speak what they know. For speech needs a sequence of words, spoken in time.

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Popular Authors

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