Alan Lightman Quotes, Years Quotes, Another Year Quotes

My second novel, "Good Benito", was not finished. I wished that I had spent another year with it.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Years Quotes , Another Year Quotes

If I were not a writer, I would spend more time doing the things that I am already doing, which include doing research in physics, teaching, and running a nonprofit organization with a mission to empower women in Cambodia.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Running Quotes , Teaching Quotes

It's not necessarily a large number of people that affect the culture. You don't count the number of influential voices, you weigh them. A hundred people can affect the culture.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Voice Quotes , Numbers Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Fiction Quotes , Jay Gould Quotes

We live in a highly polarized society. We need to try to understand each other in respectful ways. To that end, I believe that we should make room for both spiritual atheists and thinking believers.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Spiritual Quotes , Atheist Quotes

"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. I would do something and let it sit for three months... just brood about and decide I needed to slightly change something here or there. Or one character wasn't quite right. But I think everybody goes through this.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Book Quotes , Character Quotes

Unconditional love. That’s what he wants to give her and what he wants from her. People should give without wanting anything in return. All other giving is selfish. But he is being selfish a little, isn’t he, by wanting her to love him in return? He hopes that she loves him in return. Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing of rain?

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Selfish Quotes , Rain Quotes

A world with one month is a world of equality.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , World Quotes

While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , People Quotes , Geneva Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Principles Quotes , Fundamentals Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Ideas Quotes , Numbers Quotes

Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Circles Quotes , Bending Quotes

Originality is also very important to a writer. And all of the writers I've mentioned, of course, are original, but it's important to me that every book that I do be really a completely fresh and new look at the world. And of course, that makes it frightening to start a new book because you can't really depend upon what you've done with previous books.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Book Quotes , Important Quotes

Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Book Quotes , Different Quotes

The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Happiness Quotes , Pain Quotes

I'm humbled and enormously grateful to be connected to [Franz] Kafka in a any way. He is one of the writers I admire. I think he has been a big influence on me. I appreciate the idea of the individual person battling the society - which is true in all his books.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Book Quotes , Grateful Quotes

No one ever expects poetry to sell...

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes

In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time. The first is as rigid and metallic as a massive pendulum of iron that swings back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. 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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Time Quotes , Swings Quotes

Despite our strongly felt kinship and oneness with nature, all the evidence suggests that nature doesn't care one whit about us. Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions happen without the slightest consideration for human inhabitants.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Oneness Quotes , Earthquakes Quotes

I picked such seemingly disparate essays, I thought it was important to say what was the guiding principle in the selection rather than focus on any one essay. I reached for some principle that had been subconscious in me and lifted it into consciousness. Authenticity and sincerity were the most important unifying principles of all these apparently different essays.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Guiding Principles Quotes , Focus Quotes