Alan Lightman Quotes

The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.

If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.

Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.

Each time is true, but the truths are not the same.

Time is the clarity for seeing right and wrong.

While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.

But what is the past? Could it be, the firmness of the past is just illusion? Could the past be a kaleidoscope, a pattern of images that shift with each disturbance of a sudden breeze, a laugh, a thought? And if the shift is everywhere, how would we know?

In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time....Where the two times meet, desperation. Where the two times go their separate ways, contentment. For, miraculously, a barrister, a nurse, a baker can make a world in either time, but not in both times. Each time is true, but the truths are not the same.

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…

What sense is there in continuing when one has seen the future?