That's one good thing about the way life is, that no one can know you if you don't let them. — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
My heroes are, above all, the great 19th-century Americans: Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson and the others. I love the way they think. — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
This morning the world by moonlight seemed to be an immemorial acquaintance I had always meant to befriend. If there was ever… — 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
The accessibility and effective immortality of actual information is a magnificent phenomenon, a beautiful extension of human consciousness. It is too bad… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
Sometimes my doubt seems intuitive, but most likely it derives from an implausibility or a logical problem I may at first find… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
There are several sources for my appreciation of pastors and the way they are described in this book. One of them is… — 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
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
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 Copy Share Image
A sermon is a form that yields a certain kind of meaning in the same way that, say, a sonnet is a… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
There is so little to remember of anyone - an anecdote, a conversation at a table. But every memory is turned over… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
I think about things like the fact that nobody knows what time is. Time is what? Nobody can describe it, even physics… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
It is an amazing thing to watch people laugh, the way it sort of takes them over. Sometimes they really do struggle… — 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
