For me writing has always felt like praying even when I wasn't writing prayers. — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
I've learned a lot about writing from listening to my students talk. — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
“Every writer I know, when asked how to become a writer, responds with one word:Read.” — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
The Bible for me is holy writ. It's a very straightforward thing, although I am not a literalist. — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
One of the things about writing fiction is that you create people that you feel, more or less, as though you know. — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
Writing nonfiction has been my most serious education, and for all those years it kept me from even glancing in the direction… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
Never, ever condescend to the reader. Assume you are writing for someone better and smarter than you are. This will protect you… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
I believe that reality is vastly richer than the cursory attention we usually give it permits us to understand. I like to… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
Characters more or less present themselves to me. I don't know their origins. I think if I did, if I seemed to… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
When I'm writing fiction, I'm sort of interested by the fact that somehow or other I can have the feeling of actually… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
I think to the degree writers are serious, there is a greater tendency for them to write to themselves, because they're trying… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
When I went to college, I majored in American literature, which was unusual then. But it meant that I was broadly exposed… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
I really don't know why people have so much trouble now writing about religious faith. It is true that clichés can override… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
“Language is music. Written words are musical notation. The music of a piece of fiction establishes the way in which it is… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
Protestantism, of course, is much more explicitly divided into different traditions - the Pentecostals, the Anglicans. But there is the main tradition… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
Somebody who had read Lila asked me, ‘Why do you write about the problem of loneliness?’ I said: ‘It’s not a problem.… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
“I think that to be a good writer, you have to put yourself on the line, you have to think deeply about… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
“I would say, for the moment, that community, at least community larger than the immediate family, consists very largely of imaginative love… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
“I love the writers of my thousand books. It pleases me to think how astonished old Homer, whoever he was, would be… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
“For me writing has always felt like praying, even when I wasn't writing prayers, as I was often enough. You feel that… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
Isaac Watts, of course, is a hymn writer in the tradition of Congregationalism who lived in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century.… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
“But I’ve developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share
For our purposes as human beings, the mind is the center of everything. — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share
“I think sometimes there might be an advantage in making people aware how worn and stale these old transgressions are. It might take some… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share
There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share
My Calvinism persuades me that we are open to God, in the sense that we are not delimited, not organisms with fixed attributes in… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share
“You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share
I listen to Bach a great deal. In general I like to listen to hymns and liturgical music. — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share
“Every writer I know, when asked how to become a writer, responds with one word:Read.” — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share
“Faith for her was habit and family loyalty, a reverence for the Bible which was also literary, admiration for her mother and father. And… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share
“The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.’ There are pleasures to be found where you… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share
I sometimes am discouraged by what seems to be a sort of conventional disparagement of humankind. I think often people feel that they are… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share
Now that I look back, it seems to me that in all that deep darkness a miracle was preparing. So I am right to… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share
“My grandfather once told her if you couldn't read with cold feet, there wouldn't be a literate soul in the state of Maine.” — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share
“Cranky old Leviticus gave us—gave Christ—not only “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” but also the rather forgotten “Thou shalt love the stranger… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share
