As I understand it, a universe is a ... well, a totality. A universe is everything that is, as far as the inside of the thing.

Alan Lightman

Categorized in : Universe Wells Totality

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.

silence summer two

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.

inspiration writing book

When I used to play golf. It's a terrible miserable game. It's incredibly frustrating. In 18 holes you make 150 horrible shots off in the woods, in the water...You make one good shot and it brings you back the next time. With writing a long book there has to be at least one bit that has some magic in it that you can go back to.

writing golf book

You say, "Something important really happened here. I really had hold of something I was visited by the muse." And that's enough to make you continue the months and years to finish the whole book.

important book years

My second novel, "Good Benito", was not finished. I wished that I... by Alan Lightman

My second novel, "Good Benito", was not finished. I wished that I had spent another year with it.

another-year novel years

Writers are a loosely knit community - community is an overstated word. Writers don't see each other very much.

community

I consider myself an essayist and a fiction writer. In the essays, I certainly have been influenced by some of the leading science essayists. Like Loren Eiseley, Stephen Jay Gould, Lewis Thomas.

essays jay-gould fiction