Alan Lightman

Author profile

born

November 01, 1948 in Memphis, TN, The United States

gender

male

website

http://mit.edu/humanistic/www/faculty/lightman....

genre

Literature & Fiction, Science

About this author

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Alan Lightman is a physicist, novelist, and essayist born in Memphis, Tennessee. He is an adjunct professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of the international bestseller Einstein's Dreams.

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Books by Alan Lightman

Average rating: 3.87 · 12,303 ratings · 1,535 reviews · 25 distinct works

	Einstein's Dreams 4.03 avg rating — 9,893 ratings — published 1992 — 32 editions	My rating:
	Good Benito 3.32 avg rating — 465 ratings — published 1995 — 7 editions	My rating:
	Ghost: A Novel 2.96 avg rating — 513 ratings — published 2007 — 6 editions	My rating:
	The Diagnosis 2.80 avg rating — 460 ratings — published 2000 — 13 editions	My rating:
	Mr g: A Novel About The Creation 3.48 avg rating — 238 ratings — published 1998 — 14 editions	My rating:
	Reunion: A Novel 3.11 avg rating — 220 ratings — 7 editions	My rating:
	A Sense of the Mysterious: Science and the Human Spirit 3.76 avg rating — 101 ratings — published 2005 — 4 editions	My rating:
	Dance for Two: Essays 3.71 avg rating — 89 ratings — published 1996 — 2 editions	My rating:
	The Best American Essays 2000 by Alan Lightman (Editor), Robert Atwan (Series Editor) 3.66 avg rating — 56 ratings — published 2000 — 2 editions	My rating:
	The Discoveries: Great Breakthroughs in 20th-Century Science, Including the Original Papers 3.83 avg rating — 54 ratings — published 2005 — 7 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by Alan Lightman

“The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present.”
― Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams

tags: human-nature , loneliness , tragedy

38 people liked it

“If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.”
― Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams

tags: ambition , knowledge , tragedy

37 people liked it

“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, Einstein's Dreams

32 people liked it

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