Alan Lightman Quotes, Exercise Quotes, Thinking Quotes

I would think that you are more fluent with the rational. It has its appeal. But the irrational permits a greater exercise of ... shall we say, power.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Exercise Quotes , Thinking Quotes

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

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Needs Quotes , Speech Quotes

I've taken a philosophical position on e-mail. Although I think it's a wonderful communication technology, and it has a lot of good uses, it is abused quite a lot.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Communication Quotes , Philosophical Quotes

Where are the one billion people who lived and breathed in the year 1800, only two short centuries ago?

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Two Quotes , Years Quotes

It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity. It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Kissing Quotes , Past Quotes

A writer is someone who has a one-man tent in the desert and occasionally he sees the footprint of an other writer - in the form of a review or something.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Men Quotes , Desert Quotes

A life is a moment in season. A life is one snowfall. A life is one autumn day. A life is the delicate, rapid edge of a closing door's shadow. A life is a brief movement of arms and of legs.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Life Quotes , Autumn 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.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Oneness Quotes , Earthquakes Quotes

One cannot walk down an avenue, converse with a friend, enter a building, browse beneath the sandstone arches of an old arcade without meeting an instrument of time. Time is visible in all places. Clock towers, wristwatches, church bells divide years into months, months into days, days into hours, hours into seconds, each increment of time marching after the other in perfect succession. And beyond any particular clock, a vast scaffold of time, stretching across the universe, lays down the law of time equally for all.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Time Quotes , Church Bells Quotes

It's exciting having a student who is not used to expressing their emotional side and bringing that out in them and see that developing and helping to nurture that. That's an exciting thing. In a class of fifteen there are usually two very good writers, equal to good student writers anywhere in the country. Those two make the class wonderful.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Country Quotes , Emotional Quotes

In this world, artists are joyous. Unpredictability is the life of their paintings, their music, their novels. They delight in events not forecasted, happenings without explanation, retrospective.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Artist Quotes , Events Quotes

If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Ambition Quotes , Suffering Quotes

People are content to live in contradictory worlds, so long as they know the reason for each.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Long Quotes , People Quotes

As a scientist, I don't believe science will ever discover whether God exists. Nor do I believe religion will ever prove it.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Believe Quotes , Scientist Quotes

I think Joe Leiberman has been one of the leaders of the country... people have such a broad respect for him as a moral force.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Country Quotes , Thinking Quotes

-But rational thoughts lead only to rational thoughts, whereas irrational thoughts lead to new experiences.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , New Experiences Quotes , Irrational Quotes

For my students who are trying to learn the craft of writing in a writing class - contemporary literature is what's most useful.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Writing Quotes , Class Quotes

So many little lives, amounting to nothing. I ask you: What is infinity multiplied by zero? It is hardly worth our discussion.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Life Quotes , Zero Quotes

Another strand of my writing is the importance of the idea. If you think about fiction writing as a spectrum, where at one end of the spectrum in the infrared, are the story tellers, and the people for whom creation of wonderful characters and telling a good story is the most important thing.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Character Quotes , Writing Quotes

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.

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Tags : Alan Lightman Quotes , Book Quotes , Tragedy Quotes