Marilynne Robinson Quotes

149 quotes in 2054 categories

• I owe everything that I have done to the fact that I am very much at ease being alone. Alone
• Every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable, and finally has come to look and not to buy. Buy
• I can’t believe we will forget our sorrows altogether. That would mean forgetting that we had lived, humanly speaking. Sorrow seems to me to be… Altogether
• It is diversity that makes any natural system robust, and diversity that stabilizes culture against the eccentricity and arrogance that have so often called themselves… Any
• Two questions I can't really answer about fiction are 1) where it comes from, and 2) why we need it. But that we do create… Answer
• We inhabit, we are part of, a reality for which explanation is much too poor and small. Explanation
• Science can give us knowledge, but it cannot give us wisdom. Nor can religion, until it puts aside nonsense and distraction and becomes itself again. Aside
• Fiction that does not acknowledge this at least tacitly is not true. Acknowledge
• The locus of the human mystery is perception of this world. From it proceeds every thought, every art. Art
• The only obligation I recognize is to say what I believe to be true [ ] and to say it with kindness. I believe that… Believe
• For me writing has always felt like praying even when I wasn't writing prayers. Always Felt
• You have to live with your mind your whole life. Inspirational
• You build your mind, so make it into something you want to live with. Build
• Ordinary things have always seemed numinous to me Always Seemed
• I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another. Art
• We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music… Admired
• If you had to summarize the Old Testament, the summary would be: stop doing this to yourselves. Old
• It felt very good to have him walking beside her. Good like rest and quiet, like something you could live without but you needed anyway.… Beside
• There are worries that seem to me sustained by the love of worry. For example, that people are reading from screens, or listening to recorded… Book
• Many times when I stop working on a problem consciously, my mind continues to work on it below the surface. Often solutions come on me… Allow

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