A writer is someone who has a one-man tent in the desert and occasionally he sees the footprint of an other writer… — 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
Writers read essays and serious thinkers and serious readers... that is a small population. — 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
In fiction writing ideas have to be handled extremely carefully. You can't let your characters just be mouthpieces for your ideas. They… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
My writings are an exploration, and I think a lot of writers would tell you this, but in writing, you're not simply… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
It's exciting having a student who is not used to expressing their emotional side and bringing that out in them and see… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
If I were not a writer, I would spend more time doing the things that I am already doing, which include doing… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
All writers have roots they draw from - travel, work, family. My roots are in science and it is fertile ground for… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
I'm humbled and enormously grateful to be connected to [Franz] Kafka in a any way. He is one of the writers I… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
In fiction writing, I would say there are several different strands that have been woven through my own writing, and each influenced… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
Another strand of my writing is the importance of the idea. If you think about fiction writing as a spectrum, where at… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
That's the fine balance of a fiction writer...to be able to give your characters enough freedom to surprise you and yet still… — 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
Every essay - the subject matter of every essay - is ultimately about the essayist; him or herself. That ultimately, every essayist… — 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
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
I consider myself an essayist and a fiction writer. In the essays, I certainly have been influenced by some of the leading… — 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
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'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 value my correspondence with writers...I was in New York and had lunch with Oliver Sachs and compared notes with him -… — Alan Lightman Copy Share Image
I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jose Saramago, Michael Bulgakov, and… — 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
“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