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
Fiction that does not acknowledge this at least tacitly is not true. — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
Fiction may be, whatever else, an exercise in the capacity for imaginative love, or sympathy, or identification, — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
I did go through graduate school and I like to do research, to create something that has a certain objective solidity. The… — 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
Two questions I can't really answer about fiction are 1) where it comes from, and 2) why we need it. But that… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
Oddly enough, my favorite genre is not fiction. I'm attracted by primary sources that are relevant to historical questions of interest to… — 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
“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 Image
For our purposes as human beings, the mind is the center of everything. — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
I listen to Bach a great deal. In general I like to listen to hymns and liturgical music. — 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
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
