213 Quotes by Alan Lightman

At the beginning of each session, one of us will begin talking about some random idea, another person will chime in or change the subject, and miraculously, after twenty minutes, we find that we have zeroed in on a question that everyone is passionate about. What continues to astonish me is the frequency with which religion slips into the room, unbidden but persistent.

In fiction writing ideas have to be handled extremely carefully. You can’t let your characters just be mouthpieces for your ideas. They have to live and breathe on their own.

I have too many friends who tell me that they spend the first hour of every morning going through their e-mail messages. I’d like to use my time more carefully.

In a world of shifting past, these memories are wheat in wind, fleet in dreams, shapes in clouds. Events, once happened, lose reality, alter with a glance, a storm, a night. In time, the past never happened.

Have they been together a lifetime, or only a moment? Who can say?

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.