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Faith is the ability to honor stillness at some moments, and at others to ride the passion and exuberance.

Alan Lightman

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Alan Lightman
Age: 75
Born: 1948
Born: November 28
Astrophysicist
Novelist
Physicist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Memphis
Tennessee
Alan Paige Lightman
Ability
Faith
Moments
Others
Exuberance
Stillness
Ride
Honor
Passion

More quotes by Alan Lightman

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Time is the clarity for seeing right and wrong.
Alan Lightman
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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
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That's the fine balance of a fiction writer...to be able to give your characters enough freedom to surprise you and yet still maintain some kind of artistic control.
Alan Lightman
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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
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Some say it is best not to go near the center of time. Life is a vessel of sadness, but is noble to live life and without time there is no life. Others disagree. They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.
Alan Lightman
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Except for a God who sits down after the universe begins, all other gods conflict with the assumptions of science.
Alan Lightman
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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.
Alan Lightman
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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.
Alan Lightman
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The time-deaf are unable to speak what they know. For speech needs a sequence of words, spoken in time.
Alan Lightman
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Where are the one billion people who lived and breathed in the year 1800, only two short centuries ago?
Alan Lightman
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No one knows the nature of God, or even if God exists. In a sense, all of our religions are literary works of the imagination.
Alan Lightman
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The Book of Telling tells of a woman's journey to uncover the secret life of her father and to find herself in the process, an unusual counterpoint between personal history and the history of a young nation. Haunting, powerful, and beautifully written.
Alan Lightman
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If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.
Alan Lightman
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I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jose Saramago, Michael Bulgakov, and Salman Rushdie. I also like the magic realist writers, such as Borges and Marquez, and feel that interesting truths can be learned about our world by exploring highly distorted worlds.
Alan Lightman
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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.
Alan Lightman
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Who would fare better in this world of fitful time? Those who have seen the future and live only one life? Or those who have not seen the future and wait to live life? Or those who deny the future and live two lives?
Alan Lightman
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Continents of memory had been lost.
Alan Lightman
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The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present.
Alan Lightman
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A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation. For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable. While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.
Alan Lightman
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Events, once happened, lose reality, alter with a glance, a storm, a night. In time, the past never happened. But who could know? Who could know that the past is not as solid as this instant.
Alan Lightman