Quotes from Alan Lightman

By the "mysterious," I do not think Einstein was referring to something fearful or supernatural. I believe he was speaking about the boundary between the known and the unknown. Standing at that boundary is an exhilarating experience. And it is a deeply human experience—concerning what the human mind understands and what that mind does not yet understand.

As with the destruction of the environment, no one intended to rob us of our interior lives. Each of us once swallowed that first bite of the wired world, then the second. Then we were addicted. Soon, we couldn't remember what we had lost. Our children, of course, were born into the wired world, never knowing any other way of life. All this in the name of "progress.

In another house, a man sits alone at his table, laid out for two. Ten years ago, he sat here across from his father, was unable to say that he loved him, searched through the years of his childhood for some moment of closeness, remembered the evenings that silent man sat alone with his book, was unable to say that he loved him, was unable to say that he loved him.

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

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. Many

man can do what he wants," said Schopenhauer, "but not want what he wants.

The abundances caused by isolation are stifled by the same isolation

Only when the traveler communicates with the city of departure does he realize he has entered a new domain of time...It is then the traveler learns that he is cut off in time, as well as in space. No traveler goes back to his city of origin.

unopened. When her son stands in the night outside her house, she goes to bed early. In the morning, she looks at his photograph, writes adoring letters to a long-defunct address. A spinster sees the face of the young man who loved her in the mirror of her bedroom, on the ceiling of the bakery, on the surface of the lake, in the sky. The

Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free. Over time, some have determined that the only way to live is to die. In death, a man or a woman is free of the weight of the past.

The future is beckoning. She makes up her mind. Without finishing her packing, she rushes out of her house, this point of her life, rushes straight to the future.

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.

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.

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.

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

If you over-plot your book you strangle your characters. Your characters have to have enough freedom and life to be able to surprise you.

With a background in science I am extremely interested in the meeting ground of science, theology, and philosophy, especially the ethical questions at the border of science and theology.

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.

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

Imagine a world in which there is no time. Only images.

I have always loved magic realism as a form of writing. I have also been fascinated for a long time with the intersection of science and religion.

I have too many friends who tell me that they spend the first hour of every morning going through their e-mail messages. I'd like to use my time more carefully.

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

Time is a rigid, bonelike structure, extending infinitely ahead and behind, fossilizing the future as well as the past.