Alan Lightman Quotes

I'm interested in the hope we invest in science, and the disappointment we can feel when science flattens, or 'explains,' the larger mysteries of religion.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy, the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

Fantasy is fantasy. It's fiction. It's not meant to be a textbook. I don't believe in letting research overwhelm the fiction. That's a danger of science fiction in particular, as opposed to fantasy. A lot of writers forget that what they're doing is supposed to be art.

Science and religion are both the same thing. They're there; they're life. If it's not science, it's not a fact.

Mysticism, poor mysticism! When it is underestimated and oversimplified, it comes down from its original sphere and stands beside religion.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

God invented mankind because he loved silly stories.

I found it interesting that as people become more technically oriented all over the world, at the same time people are becoming increasingly spiritual. The success of the Da Vinci code - even though it was a great yawn - also showed people's interest in religion.

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.

Most modern science fiction went to school on 'Dune.' Even 'Harry Potter' with its 'boy protagonist who has not yet grown into his destiny' shares a common theme. When I read it for the first time, I felt like I had learned another language, mastered a new culture, adopted a new religion.

The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion.

Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.

As for the Devil - that is somebody our religion tried to do without for a long time.

I like certain subgenres within science fiction and fantasy, and one of those is urban fantasy, and another is steampunk.

An editor named Kerrie Hughes wanted me to write a short story that brought my fire-spider Smudge from my goblin books into the present-day world. I came up with libriomancy as a way to make that happen.

Writers of all things speculative have played in alternate and parallel worlds for a long time - everyone from Stephen King to Philip Pullman to Tanith Lee - and it's an obsession that likely isn't going away any time soon.

I have friends who are scientists, strict materialists, who don't think science and religion are compatible, but I just think most of us - unless you're a strict atheist materialist, which there aren't many of - most of us believe in something outside the material world. And if you do believe that, I don't know how you're not obsessed with it.

I've always liked fairy tale and spectacle. I wouldn't say I was a fantasy fan, but anything beyond reality I've always found exciting - the work of David Lynch, the work of Tim Burton. But for me, I also love those things that are absolutely about human relationships.

With sci-fi you get these kind of stories in historical drama, and it's just so fabulous.

Superstition is only the fear of belief, while religion is the confidence.

I have never been converted to or even had much interest in spiritualism, occultism, Swedenborgianism or any particular religion. And I never, except occasionally for a laugh, visit the quacks who call themselves psychics.

I'm very passionate about philosophy and religion.

I'm a scientist, not a theologian. I don't know if there is a God or not. Religion requires certainty. Revere and respect Gaia. Have trust in Gaia. But not faith.

To me, fantasy has always been the genre of escape, science fiction the genre of ideas. So if you can escape and have a little idea as well, maybe you have some kind of a cross-breed between the two.

For me, even in my first book, the pleasures of writing anything magical is that it has to be physical. It has to be grounded and very much in this world. Then, I get to play with all the consequences of this new thing.