Alan Lightman quotes - page 3

Alan Lightman is an American physicist, writer, and social thinker known for blending science and the humanities. His novel "Einstein's Dreams" captivated readers around the world and has been translated into more than 30 languages. He explores the intersection of science, philosophy, and human experience in both his fiction and nonfiction works. Here are 70 of his quotes:

I re-read a lot of books that I like a lot. There are some books that I try to reread every couple of years. A good book changes for you every few years because you are in a different place in your own life.

Alan Lightman

I should have written books instead of reading them.

Alan Lightman

Scientists will forever have to live with the fact that their product is, in the end, impersonal.

Alan Lightman

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.

Alan Lightman

No one ever expects poetry to sell...

Alan Lightman

In a world in which time is a circle, every handshake, every kiss, every birth, every word, will be repeated precisely.

Alan Lightman

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

Alan Lightman

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.

Alan Lightman

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

Alan Lightman

I still will sit down at the piano and play when I am wrestling with something emotionally or just want to move into the musical world.

Alan Lightman

The target of power is more interesting than its quantity.

Alan Lightman

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

Alan Lightman

In fiction writing, I would say there are several different strands that have been woven through my own writing, and each influenced by a different group of writers.

Alan Lightman

Workers... rather have used their increased efficiencies and resulting increased disposable income to purchase more material goods. ...Indeed, in a cruel irony, the workweek has actually lengthened. ...More work is required to pay for more consumption, fueled by more production, in an endless, vicious circle.

Alan Lightman

According to the Bureau of Statistics, the goods and services produced per hour of work in the United States has indeed more than doubled since 1950.

Alan Lightman

In the 1950s, academics forecast that as a result of new technology, by the year 2000 we could have a twenty-hour workweek.

Alan Lightman

I think e-mail is representative of our fast food mentality in the United States, where everything has gotten faster and faster, and we're required to respond to inputs more quickly with less time for thought and reflection. I believe that we need to slow down.

Alan Lightman

Then there are those who think that their bodies don't exist. They live by mechanical time. They rise at seven o'clock in the morning. They eat their lunch at noon and their supper at six. They arrive at their appointments on time, precisely by the clock. They make love between eight and ten at night. They work forty hours a week, read the Sunday paper on Sunday, play chess on Tuesday nights. When their stomach growls, they look at their watch to see if it is time to eat. When they begin to lose themselves in a concert, they look at the clock above the stage to see when it will be time to go home. They know that the body is not a thing of wild magic, but a collection of chemicals, tissues, and nerve impulses.

Alan Lightman