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

Alan Lightman

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Alan Lightman
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: November 28
Astrophysicist
Novelist
Physicist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Memphis
Tennessee
Alan Paige Lightman
Little
Infinity
Nothing
Zero
Many
Hardly
Life
Discussion
Worth
Asks
Lives
Amounting
Littles
Multiplied

More quotes by Alan Lightman

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Everyone shares the same fate.
Alan Lightman
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As long as God does not intervene in the contemporary universe in such a way as to violate physical laws, science has no way of knowing whether God exists or not. The belief or disbelief in such a Being is therefore a matter of faith.
Alan Lightman
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Writers read essays and serious thinkers and serious readers... that is a small population.
Alan Lightman
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As human beings, don't we need questions without answers as well as questions with answers, questions that we might someday answer and questions that we can never answer?
Alan Lightman
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All writers have roots they draw from - travel, work, family. My roots are in science and it is fertile ground for fiction.
Alan Lightman
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I think people all over the institution recognize that different ways of understanding are valuable. Artists may think in a different way than biologists or chemists, but you can learn something from that. It is true that the arts at MIT don't have the same amount of funding or same status as the sciences or engineering.
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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The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.
Alan Lightman
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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
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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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For it is only habit and memory that dulls the physical passion. Without memory, each night is the first night, each morning is the first morning, each kiss and touch are the first.
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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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
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It's not necessarily a large number of people that affect the culture. You don't count the number of influential voices, you weigh them. A hundred people can affect the culture.
Alan Lightman
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Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.
Alan Lightman
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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
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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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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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In a world without future, each moment is the end of the world.
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