Writers read essays and serious thinkers and serious readers... that is a small population. — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
You say, "Something important really happened here. I really had hold of something I was visited by the muse." And that's enough… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
If you over-plot your book you strangle your characters. Your characters have to have enough freedom and life to be able to… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way. — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
Novels aren't pedagogical instruments, or instructions in law or physics or any other discipline. A novel has to be an emotional experience,… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
"The Diagnosis" had ten drafts of very significant changing, where I went through the whole book, wholesale and changed everything. Then the… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
"The Diagnosis" is by far my most ambitious book. I such great hopes for it... there was so much I wanted to… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
The Book of Telling tells of a woman's journey to uncover the secret life of her father and to find herself in… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
A good book changes for you every few years because you are in a different place in your own life. That's a… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
I think all tragedies are best told with some humor. You have to relieve the darkness to let the reader get through… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
Originality is also very important to a writer. And all of the writers I've mentioned, of course, are original, but it's important… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
For my students who are trying to learn the craft of writing in a writing class - contemporary literature is what's most… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
One day I'm going to write a book about osprey. It has really gotten deep into my bloodstream. So when you ask… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
Franz Kafka is an idea person. His books begin and end in ideas. Ideas have always been important to me in my… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
My second novel, "Good Benito", was not finished. I wished that I had spent another year with it. — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
I think it is always a long shot getting a book made into a film. Making that book into a film is… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
I re-read a lot of books that I like a lot. There are some books that I try to reread every couple… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
When I used to play golf. It's a terrible miserable game. It's incredibly frustrating. In 18 holes you make 150 horrible shots… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
I'm still happy with the way Einstein's Dreams came out. That book came out of a single inspiration. I really felt like… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
I think what gets you through a small writing project, is just one burst of inspiration. A book, especially a longer book,… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
I love the fact publishers are still publishing unprofitable material. It's a challenge to the powers that be. It's saying there is… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
The book is finished by the reader. A good novel should invite the reader in and let the reader participate in the… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
“A world without memory is a world of the present. The past exists only in books, in documents...A spinster sees the face… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
“In a world of fixed future, there can be no right or wrong. Right and wrong demand freedom of choice, but if each action… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
“I've decided that has been the great achievement of our age: to so thoroughly flood the planet with megabits that every image and fact… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way. — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
"The Diagnosis" is by far my most ambitious book. I such great hopes for it... there was so much I wanted to do with… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
As long as God does not intervene in the contemporary universe in such a way as to violate physical laws, science has no way… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
Except for a God who sits down after the universe begins, all other gods conflict with the assumptions of science. — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
A writer is someone who has a one-man tent in the desert and occasionally he sees the footprint of an other writer - in… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
Time is a rigid, bonelike structure, extending infinitely ahead and behind, fossilizing the future as well as the past. — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
For me, spirituality includes the belief in things larger than ourselves, an appreciation of nature and beauty, a sensitivity to the world, a feeling… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
Writers are a loosely knit community - community is an overstated word. Writers don't see each other very much. — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
