Quote

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.

Alan Lightman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alan Lightman
Age: 75
Born: 1948
Born: November 28
Astrophysicist
Novelist
Physicist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Memphis
Tennessee
Alan Paige Lightman
Without
Happenings
Life
Delight
World
Artists
Retrospective
Painting
Unpredictability
Novel
Joyous
Events
Paintings
Artist
Novels
Music
Explanation

More quotes by Alan Lightman

Image
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
Image
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
Image
I have a number of vague ideas where I just have the core or kernel of the idea. I feel like I need some time for my mind to fill up again. I feel empty. Right now.
Alan Lightman
Image
Don't you feel something magical when you're in love?... I do, I certainly do ... but I think that feeling of magic is a hardwired psychological response. It's a chemical thing in the brain. It's a flow of chemicals and electrical currents, and it developed over millions of years in the process of evolution to aid in the procreation of the species.
Alan Lightman
Image
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 [and the future].
Alan Lightman
Image
The urge to discover, to invent, to know the unknown, seems so deeply human that we cannot imagine our history without it.
Alan Lightman
Image
I value my correspondence with writers...I was in New York and had lunch with Oliver Sachs and compared notes with him - he is someone I really like. I love staying in written correspondence with some writers. That's enough for me.
Alan Lightman
Image
Every essay - the subject matter of every essay - is ultimately about the essayist him or herself. That ultimately, every essayist is writing about his or her view of the world.
Alan Lightman
Image
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
Image
Writers are a loosely knit community - community is an overstated word. Writers don't see each other very much.
Alan Lightman
Image
I think all tragedies are best told with some humor. You have to relieve the darkness to let the reader get through it. Also, that life has happiness and sadness mixed together. If you told a story that was all darkness, it wouldn't be real.
Alan Lightman
Image
All writers have roots they draw from - travel, work, family. My roots are in science and it is fertile ground for fiction.
Alan Lightman
Image
Novels aren't pedagogical instruments, or instructions in law or physics or any other discipline. A novel has to be an emotional experience, a trip of the imagination, and because science has raised so many issues that concern and affect humans, it's a good starting place for me.
Alan Lightman
Image
My writings are an exploration, and I think a lot of writers would tell you this, but in writing, you're not simply putting down things that are already known to you. You're actually discovering in the writing process, you're actually creating knowledge.
Alan Lightman
Image
You've made something grand, but it will be grander if it has feeling and beauty and harmony.
Alan Lightman
Image
No one ever expects poetry to sell...
Alan Lightman
Image
So many little lives, amounting to nothing. I ask you: What is infinity multiplied by zero? It is hardly worth our discussion.
Alan Lightman
Image
The target of power is more interesting than its quantity.
Alan Lightman
Image
Unfortunately, public debates do not have much room for subtlety. The audience wants a quick thrust at your opponent, not a slow and convoluted series of moves. Whenever Obama uses subtleties in discussing a complex issue, he gets creamed.
Alan Lightman
Image
Everyone shares the same fate.
Alan Lightman