Quotes from Marilynne Robinson

I like to read in my own house, in any of the rooms I always mean to paint or otherwise improve and never do. Every detail is so familiar to me that it makes almost no claim on my attention.

I was read to as a small child, I read on my own as soon as I could, and I recall being more or less overwhelmed again and again - if not by what the books actually said, by what they suggested, what they helped me to imagine.

I doubt that I could create a character I loathed simply because when a character takes life, it is impossible not to be a little amazed by the phenomenon, and to find that the amazement has something of the quality of delight.

The old man always said we should attend to the things we have some hope of understanding, and eternity isn't one of them. Well, this world isn't one either.

Faith takes a great many forms, suited to a variety of sensibilities, and mine happens to suit me very well.

When my mother left me waiting for her, [she] established in me the habit of waiting and expectation which makes any present moment most significant for what it does not contain.

We are part of a mystery, a splendid mystery within which we must attempt to orient ourselves if we are to have a sense of our own nature.

Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.

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

Limitation is a good discipline because it discourages inappropriate generalization, which distracts attention from the profound, particular complexity that characterizes anything at all.

Weary or bitter of bewildered as we may be, God is faithful. He lets us wander so we will know what it means to come home.

He [Christ] even restored the severed ear of the soldier who came to arrest Him - a fact that allows us to hope the resurrection will reflect a considerable attention to detail.

I wrote almost all of it in the deepest hope and conviction. Sifting my thoughts and choosing my words. Trying to say what was true. And I'll tell you frankly, that was wonderful.

When we accept dismissive judgments of our community we stop having generous hope for it. We cease to be capable of serving its best interests.

I think the essence of family is that you have to agree to it, and then supply, out of your imagination and capacity for loyalty, the contents of it.

There are a thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.

When I read 'Paradise Lost,' or 'Richard III,' it is clear that Milton and Shakespeare took real pleasure and satisfaction from creating these epitomes of evil.

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

For me writing has always felt like praying even when I wasn't writing prayers.

The only obligation I recognize is to say what I believe to be true [ ] and to say it with kindness. I believe that is how a Christian conversation should proceed.

I find that the hardest work in the world... is to persuade Easterners that growing up in the West is not intellectually crippling.

My family was pious and Presbyterian mainly because my grandfather was pious and Presbyterian, but that was more of an inherited intuition than an actual fact.

Teaching is a distraction and a burden, but it's also an incredible stimulus. And a reprieve, in a way. When you're trying to work on something and it's not going anywhere, you can go to school and there's a two-and-a-half-hour block of time in which you can accomplish something.

Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life.