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We're plugged in 24 hours a day now. We're all part of one big machine, whether we are conscious of that or not. And if we can't unplug from that machine, eventually we're going to become mindless.
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
Bigs
Plugged
Become
Mindless
Part
Machine
Going
Eventually
Machines
Conscious
Hours
Whether
Unplug
More quotes by Alan Lightman
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.
Alan Lightman
Imagine a world in which there is no time. Only images.
Alan Lightman
I'm humbled and enormously grateful to be connected to [Franz] Kafka in a any way. He is one of the writers I admire. I think he has been a big influence on me. I appreciate the idea of the individual person battling the society - which is true in all his books.
Alan Lightman
A person who cannot imagine the future is a person who cannot contemplate the results of his actions. Some are thus paralyzed into inaction.
Alan Lightman
The time-deaf are unable to speak what they know. For speech needs a sequence of words, spoken in time.
Alan Lightman
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
Some make light of decisions, arguing that all possible decisions will occur. In such a world, how could one be responsible for his actions? Others hold that each decision must be considered and committed to, that without commitment there is chaos. Such people are content to live in contradictory worlds, so long as they know the reason for each.
Alan Lightman
Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.
Alan Lightman
In a world of fixed future, life is an infinite corridor of rooms, one room lit at each moment, the next room dark but prepared. We walk from room to room, look into the room that is lit, the present moment, then walk on. We do not know the rooms ahead, but we know we cannot change them. We are spectators of our lives.
Alan Lightman
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
I am spellbound by the plays of Shakespeare. And I am spellbound by the second law of thermodynamics. The great ideas in science, like the Cro-Magnon paintings and the plays of Shakespeare, are part of our cultural heritage.
Alan Lightman
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.
Alan Lightman
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
If I were not a writer, I would spend more time doing the things that I am already doing, which include doing research in physics, teaching, and running a nonprofit organization with a mission to empower women in Cambodia.
Alan Lightman
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
I go to live in Maine for the summer. Without computer, and without the telephone service we are mercifully without the faxes and e-mails. So it's really about two and a half months that I'll feel like I can recover some silence in my life...which is so hard to find.
Alan Lightman
I consider myself a spiritual atheist. I certainly believe there are forces bigger than ourselves, and that we should be searching, individually, for meaning in our lives. But I don't believe there's a supreme being, an intelligence that created everything.
Alan Lightman
Scientists will forever have to live with the fact that their product is, in the end, impersonal.
Alan Lightman
As a scientist, I don't believe science will ever discover whether God exists. Nor do I believe religion will ever prove it.
Alan Lightman
I think what gets you through a small writing project, is just one burst of inspiration. A book, especially a longer book, it's a different kind of force that pushes you through it. It's a vision of the whole thing.
Alan Lightman