Alan Lightman Quotes

I'm desperately trying to unplug. The last thing I want is a watch that connects to my phone which connects to my iPad that connects to my computer that airplays to my TV.

Even when you take a holiday from technology, technology doesn't take a break from you.

I used to work for 12 or 14 hours at a time but the digital age has made such happy immersions almost impossible.

I'm not one of those people who sits at dinner on their iPhone all night. I'm either working or I'm not. I've gone down that path where you sleep with your phone beside the bed and send an email just before you put your head down and check everything again when you wake up, and I don't like it.

These days, unplugged places are getting hard to find.

Yes, I'm grateful for technology. But I'm also happy for the off switch.

The dirty little secret that nobody likes to talk about is that things just might have been better before the Internet. We had more time to ourselves before cell phones and text messaging and Facebook consumed our lives.

I am not a big technology person. I don't go on the Internet really much at all. Drawing is like a zen thing; it's private, which in this day and age is harder to come by.

We use work to numb out. We can't turn off our machines because we're afraid we're going to miss something.

Even before smart phones and the Internet, we had many ways to distract our selves. Now that's compounded by a factor of trillions.

You'd be surprised how difficult it is relinquish a cell phone.

If you're always worried about being on your phone, then you really are missing out on everything that's happening in front of you.

The moment of drifting into thought has been so clipped by modern technology. Our lives are filled with distraction with smartphones and all the rest. People are so locked into not being present.

I've given up email. Well, almost. At the weekend I set up one of those auto-reply messages, informing my correspondents that I would no longer be checking my emails, and that instead they might like to call or write, as we used to in the olden days.

My mind is constantly going. For me to completely relax, I gotta get rid of my cell phone.

I dream of not having access to technology. I think it's a very wonderful time that we have found ourselves in, in terms of access to information, but alone time is better for some personalities than others. And I would very gladly give it up. I think I'd do very well.

In barely one generation, we've moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them - often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug.

I was the last person to get high-speed Internet, I was the last person to get an iPod, the last person to get an iPhone... I travel to India for one month out of the year and I don't have a phone there, so I can go without, which is beautiful, too.

I spend so much time on the screen when I am writing, the last thing you want to do is spend more time on the Internet looking at a screen. That's what I hate about all this technology.

While technology empowers us to remain connected all the time, it's up to us as people to decide when is it not appropriate to be connected... to opt out when you need to.

I want to be able to leave my phone at home.

I want people to come to me open and vulnerable. When they come to the gallery, they have to leave their watches, their computers, their Blackberrys, iPads, iPhones, because we are so incredibly used to technology, and I wanted to remove that.

As a form of escapism, yearning for the 20th century is understandable, but in practice it would be horrible - sort of like going on a holiday promising yourself you could go without the Internet, only to crumble and walk in a daze to the local Internet cafe to gorge on connectivity.

I don't think its good for the soul to invest too much of yourself in technology.

Almost every time I go to the ocean, I think about throwing my phone right into it. Sometimes, you pull that thing out of your pocket, you look at it, and you're like, 'What was I just going to do with this? Was I going to take a note? Was I going to check my email? Was I going to take a picture?'