“Consider a world in which cause and effect are erratic. Sometimes the first precedes the second, sometimes the second the first.... Each… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
But what is the past? Could it be, the firmness of the past is just illusion? Could the past be a kaleidoscope,… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
I wouldn't overall say that "The Diagnosis" is a funny book. I would say that it has comic moments. It's a modern… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free. Over time, some have determined that the only… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
There is a place where time stands still ...illuminated by only the most feeble red light, for light is diminished to almost… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly. — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
Most people have learned to live in the moment. The argument goes that if the past has uncertain effect on the present,… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
Children grow rapidly, forget the centuries-long embrace from their parents, which to them lasted but seconds. Children become adults, live far from… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy. — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
Who would fare better in this world of fitful time? Those who have seen the future and live only one life? Or… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
I have a family and you know very well the time that that takes. That's good time. I have a couple hobbies.… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
I think e-mail is representative of our fast food mentality in the United States, where everything has gotten faster and faster, and… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation. For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
Events, once happened, lose reality, alter with a glance, a storm, a night. In time, the past never happened. But who could… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
The time-deaf are unable to speak what they know. For speech needs a sequence of words, spoken in time. — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
“Will these millions of children, for generations upon future generations, know that some of their atoms cycled through this woman? [...] Will… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
When the first mechanical clocks were invented, marking off time in crisp, regular intervals, it must have surprised people to discover that… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
“If time and the passage of events are the same, then time moves barely at all. If time and events are not… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
I have always loved magic realism as a form of writing. I have also been fascinated for a long time with the… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
In a world in which time is a circle, every handshake, every kiss, every birth, every word, will be repeated precisely. — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
We've lost our way, we have lost our centeredness. We don't have the time, literally, to think during the day. To listen… — 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
A life is a moment in season. A life is one snowfall. A life is one autumn day. A life is the… — 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
