Marilynne Robinson

“Their lives spun off the tilting world like thread off a spindle, breakfast time, suppertime, lilac time, apple time.”

— Marilynne Robinson

“For need can blossom into all the compensations it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and…

— Marilynne Robinson

“Much more prayer is called for, clearly, but first I will take a nap.”

— Marilynne Robinson

“But there is something about human beings that too often makes our love for the world look very much like hatred for…

— Marilynne Robinson

Rejoice with those who rejoice." I have found that difficult too often. I was much better at weeping with those who weep.

— Marilynne Robinson

It is a good thing to know what it is to be poor, and a better thing if you can do it…

— Marilynne Robinson

“...you never do know the actual nature even of your own experience. Or perhaps it has no fixed and certain nature.”

— Marilynne Robinson

My brother told me I was going to be a poet. I had a good brother. He did a lot of good…

— Marilynne Robinson

One of the things that is wonderful about hymns is that they are a sort of universally shared poetry, at least among…

— Marilynne Robinson

Most institutions of higher learning in the West were founded by and for religious denominations. The supposed alienation of education and faith…

— Marilynne Robinson

“I’m not going to force some theory on a mystery and make foolishness of it, just because that is what people who…

— Marilynne Robinson

There is more beauty than our eyes can bear, precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to…

— Marilynne Robinson

These people who can see right through you never quite do you justice, because they never give you credit for the effort…

— Marilynne Robinson

The accessibility and effective immortality of actual information is a magnificent phenomenon, a beautiful extension of human consciousness. It is too bad…

— Marilynne Robinson

When I lecture, under almost all circumstances, I write a new lecture for the occasion. It helps me think. It helps me…

— Marilynne Robinson

...if you ever wonder what you've done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God's grace…

— Marilynne Robinson

“For why do our thoughts turn to some gesture of hand, the fall of a sleeve, some corner of a room on…

— 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,…

— Marilynne Robinson

Teaching is a distraction and a burden, but it's also an incredible stimulus. And a reprieve, in a way. When you're trying…

— Marilynne Robinson

“If the Lord chooses to make nothing of our transgressions, then they are nothing. Or whatever reality they have is trivial and…

— Marilynne Robinson

“At very best there are two major problems with ideology. The first is that it does not represent or conform to or…

— Marilynne Robinson

“And old Boughton, if he could stand up out of his chair, out of his decrepitude and crankiness and sorrow and limitation,…

— Marilynne Robinson

That's the strangest thing about this life, about being in the ministry. People change the subject when they see you coming. And…

— Marilynne Robinson

The loss of seriousness seems to me to be, in effect, a loss of hope. I think that the thing that made…

— Marilynne Robinson

“Science of the kind I criticize tends to assert that everything is explicable, that whatever has not been explained will be explained--and,…

— Marilynne Robinson

“The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet. On some impulse, plain…

— Marilynne Robinson

That odd capacity for destitution, as if by nature we ought to have so much more than nature gives us. As if…

— Marilynne Robinson

I am interested in Scripture and theology. This is an interest that I can assume I would share with a pastor, so…

— Marilynne Robinson

“I have been thinking about existence lately. In fact, I have been so full of admiration for existence that I have hardly…

— Marilynne Robinson

“It is...difficult to describe someone, since memories are by their nature fragmented, isolated, and arbitrary as glimpses one has at night through…

— Marilynne Robinson

Religion, if it is genuine, is so profoundly interwoven with individual thought and experience that it is no more exhaustible than consciousness…

— Marilynne Robinson

“As I have told you, I myself was the good son, so to speak, the one who never left his father's house…

— Marilynne Robinson

“It seems as though the conclusions are never as interesting as the questions. I mean, they’re not what you remember.”

— Marilynne Robinson

“You must forgive in order to understand. Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding.”

— Marilynne Robinson

I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another.

— Marilynne Robinson

“The force behind the movement of time is a mourning that will not be comforted.”

— Marilynne Robinson

“My custom has always been to ponder grief; that is, to follow it through ventricle and aorta to find its lurking places.”

— Marilynne Robinson

The Bible for me is holy writ. It's a very straightforward thing, although I am not a literalist.

— 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

What an embarrassment that was, being somewhere because there was nowhere else for you to be.

— Marilynne Robinson