“Every writer I know, when asked how to become a writer, responds with one word:Read.” — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
I like a book to be full of the memory of what it is, a voice in an endless conversation, and yet… — 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
Fiction that does not acknowledge this at least tacitly is not true. — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
The best essays come from the moment in which people really need to work something out. — 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… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
I tend to think of the reading of any book as preparation for the next reading of it. There are always intervening… — 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
“Why should a family with eight rambunctious children bother owning anything that could be damaged? They sat on the arms of their… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
I was read to as a small child, I read on my own as soon as I could, and I recall being… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
I wrote almost all of it in the deepest hope and conviction. Sifting my thoughts and choosing my words. Trying to say… — 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
“Open a book and a voice speaks. A world, more or less alien or welcoming, emerges to enrich a reader’s store of… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
“You can love a bad book for its haplessness or pomposity or gall, if you have that starveling appetite for things human… — 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
“Your mother goes to the public library, which has been down on its luck for a long time, like most things around… — Marilynne Robinson Copy Share Image
“Before I was born she had bought herself a new home health care book. It was large and expensive, and it was… — 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
“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
My first novel, 'Housekeeping,' was accepted by the first agent who read it, and bought by the first editor who read it.… — 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
When I lecture, under almost all circumstances, I write a new lecture for the occasion. It helps me think. It helps me… — 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
