Alan Lightman Quotes

It is commonly said that a teacher fails if he has not been surpassed by his students. There has been no failure on our part in this regard considering how far they have gone.

I had three brilliant English teachers at secondary school. They found the writer in me.

I've learned a lot about writing from listening to my students talk.

Creative writing lessons can be very useful, just like music lessons can be useful. To say, as Hanif Kureishi did, that 99.9% of students are talentless is cruel and wrong. I believe that certain writers like to believe they arrived into the world with special, unteachable powers because it is good for the ego.

A professor can never better distinguish himself in his work than by encouraging a clever pupil, for the true discovers are among them, as comets amongst the stars.

Maybe you could be a great writer - maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper - but you might not know it until you write that English paper - that English class paper that's assigned to you.

I never went to a writing school, so 'The Wire' was my writing school.

I did study with Anne Carson briefly in Michigan. She taught there, and that's where I first encountered her, in her class.

In academe, we ought to temper our criticism of the idea of self-help because, in a more complex way, it is precisely what we offer our students through our teaching.

College kids want to be coached. They want to be taught. They might resist it a little bit early on, but the more you give, the more you get back.

I belong to a teachers' family and writing was my expression.

I have three incredible nieces and a nephew who's going off to college. To hear them say they're proud of me left me in tears.

You can't teach somebody how to be a good writer.

I have felt at times with groups of children that I was really being what every poet would like to be - a bard in the old sense.

I teach some of the guys stuff that I've learned.

I guess I feel it's funny to be looked to for advice on writing when I am still taking in so much from other people.

When the uncapped potential of a student meets the liberating art of a teacher, a miracle unfolds.

An educational foundation is only part of the equation. In order for creativity to flourish and imagination to take hold, we also need to expose our children to the arts from a very young age.

Teaching is a creative profession, not a delivery system. Great teachers do [pass on information], but what great teachers also do is mentor, stimulate, provoke, engage.

I wrote a great deal of verse. In fact, every time I fell in love, which was rather often, I burst into the emotional sort of thing which is perennially salable.

My students are very special. They are my source of pride, my source of joy, my source of hope. I am terribly fond of my students.

We need to get back to trusting our emotional rapport with children, to seeing a child's beauty and singling that child out. That's how the mentor system works - you're caught up in the fantasy of another person. Your imagination and their come together.

We need emotional outlets in this country, and the more artistic people we develop the better it will be for us as a nation.

Our classes were relatively small. Those small classes can feel like family. After a class in French or chemistry or whatever, we'd be talking in the halls about what we just learned.

Artistic talent is far more common than the talent to nurture artistic talent.