Marilynne Robinson Quotes

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She closed one eye and looked at me and said, "I know there is a blessing in this somewhere." It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire. Another reason why you must be careful of your health.

Marilynne Robinson
I think the essence of family is that you have to agree to it, and then supply, out of your imagination and capacity for loyalty, the contents of it.

Marilynne Robinson
I wrote almost all of it in the deepest hope and conviction. Sifting my thoughts and choosing my words. Trying to say what was true. And I'll tell you frankly, that was wonderful.

Marilynne Robinson
I want to overhear passionate arguments about what we are and what we are doing and what we ought to do. I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another. I want to believe there are geniuses scheming to astonish the rest of us, just for the pleasure of it.

Marilynne Robinson
And there is no living creature, though the whims of eons had put its eyes on boggling stalks and clamped it in a carapace, diminished it to a pinpoint and given it a taste for mud and stuck it down a well or hid it under a stone, but that creature will live on if it can.

Marilynne Robinson
It is possible to know the great truths without feeling the truth of them.

Marilynne Robinson
For me writing has always felt like praying even when I wasn't writing prayers.

Marilynne Robinson
When we accept dismissive judgments of our community we stop having generous hope for it. We cease to be capable of serving its best interests.

Marilynne Robinson
It is an amazing thing to watch people laugh, the way it sort of takes them over. Sometimes they really do struggle with it... so I wonder what it is and where it comes from, and I wonder what it expends out of your system, so that you have to do it till you're done, like crying in a way, I suppose, except that laughter is much more easily spent.

Marilynne Robinson
And often enough, when we think we are protecting ourselves, we are struggling against our rescuer.

Marilynne Robinson
When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters. There are so many things you would never think to tell anyone. And I believe they may be the things that mean most to you, and that even your own child would have to know in order to know you well at all.

Marilynne Robinson
The locus of the human mystery is perception of this world. From it proceeds every thought, every art.

Marilynne Robinson
The basis of democracy is the willingness to assume well about other people.

Marilynne Robinson
There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world's mortal insufficiency to us.

Marilynne Robinson
Then there is the matter of my mother's abandonment of me. Again, this is the common experience. They walk ahead of us, and walk too fast, and forget us, they are so lost in thoughts of their own, and soon or late they disappear. The only mystery is that we expect it to be otherwise.

Marilynne Robinson
Fiction that does not acknowledge this at least tacitly is not true.

Marilynne Robinson
She conceived of life as a road down which one traveled, an easy enough road through a broad country, and that one's destination was there from the very beginning, a measured distance away, standing in the ordinary light like some plain house where one went in and was greeted by respectable people and was shown to a room where everything one had ever lost or put aside was gathered together, waiting.

Marilynne Robinson
I'm writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you've done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God's grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.

Marilynne Robinson
Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery.

Marilynne Robinson
You see how it is godlike to love the being of someone. Your existence is a delight to us. I hope you never have to long for a child as I did, but oh, what a splendid thing it has been that you came finally, and what a blessing to enjoy you now for almost seven years.

Marilynne Robinson
That's one good thing about the way life is, that no one can know you if you don't let them.

Marilynne Robinson
I think the attempt to defend belief can unsettle it, in fact, because there is always an inadequacy in argument about ultimate things.

Marilynne Robinson
I think hope is the worst thing in the world. I really do. It makes a fool of you while it lasts. And then when it's gone, it's like there's nothing left of you at all... except what you can't be rid of.

Marilynne Robinson
The Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?

Marilynne Robinson
There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, everyone of them sufficient

Marilynne Robinson
Dawn and its excesses always reminded me of heaven, a place where I have always known I would not be comfortable.

Marilynne Robinson
When we did not move or speak, there was no proof that we were there at all.

Marilynne Robinson
Well, but you two are dancing around in your iridescent little downpour, whooping and stomping as sane people ought to do when they encounter a thing so miraculous as water.

Marilynne Robinson
You never know when you might be seeing someone for the last time.

Marilynne Robinson
He will wipe the tears from all faces.' It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required

Marilynne Robinson