Quotes from Marilynne Robinson

Time that had not come yet—an anomaly in itself—had the fiercest reality for her. It was a hard wind in her face; if she had made the world, every tree would be bent, every stone weathered, every bough stripped by that steady and contrary wind. Lucille saw in everything its potential for invidious change.

Fear and comfort could be the same thing. It was strange, when she thought of it. The wind always somewhere, trifling with the leaves, troubling the firelight. And that smell of damp earth and bruised grass, a lonely, yearning sort of smell that meant, Why don't you come back, you will come back, you know you will.

The world don't want you as long as there is any life in you at all.

Doll may have been the loneliest woman in the world, and she was the loneliest child, and there they were, the two of them together, keeping each other warm in the rain.

Those who can't hope can still wish.

Some dogs bite. So you keep them away from people. You can't just get rid of them, for being the way they are. And now and then you can be glad to have them around, to snarl the way a good dog never does.

I say this because there was a seriousness about her that seemed almost like a kind of anger. As though she might say, I came here from whatever unspeakable distance and from whatever unimaginable otherness just to oblige your prayers. Now say something with a little meaning in it.

These little towns were once the bold ramparts meant to shelter just such peace.

He said, Family is a prayer. Wife is a prayer. Marriage is a prayer. Baptism is a prayer. No, he said. Baptism is a what I'd call a fact.

I could probably not say more than that life is a very deep mystery, and that finally the grace of God is all that can resolve it. And the grace of God is also a very deep mystery.

Though I must say all this has given me a new glimpse of the ongoingness of the world. We fly forgotten as a dream, certainly, leaving the forgetful world behind us to trample and mar and misplace everything we have ever cared for. That is just the way of it, and it is remarkable.

I am glad I didn't understand, because I have rarely felt joy like that, and assurance. It was like one of those dreams where you're filled with some extravagant feeling you might never have in life, it doesn't matter what it is, even guilt or dread, and you learn from it what an amazing instrument you are, so to speak, what a power you have to experience beyond anything you might ever actually need. Who would have thought that the moon could dazzle and flame like that?

There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You must forgive in order to understand. Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding...If you forgive, he would say, you may indeed still not understand, but you will be ready to understand, and that is a posture of grace.

Touch a limit of your understanding and it falls away, to reveal mystery upon mystery.

There are many ways to live a good life

remembering and forgiving can be contrary things. No doubt they usually are.

Home. What kinder place could there be on earth, and why did it seem to them all like exile? Oh

It all means more than I can tell you. So you must not judge what I know by what I find words for." (p 114)

I believe there is dignity in sorrow simply because it is God's good pleasure that there should be. He is forever raising up those who are brought low.

It all means more than I can tell you. So you must not judge what I know by what I find words for." (Gilead, p 114)

And as we glided across the ice toward Fingerbone, we would become aware of the darkness, too close to us, like a presence in a dream. The comfortable yellow lights of the town were then the only comfort there was in the world, and there were not many of them. If every house in Fingerbone were to fall before our eyes, snuffing every light, the event would touch our senses as softly as a shifting among embers, and then the bitter darkness would step nearer.

I've shepherded a good many people through their lives, I've baptized babies by the hundred, and all that time I have felt as though a great part of life was closed to me. Your mother says I was like Abraham. But I had no old wife and no promise of a child. I was just getting by on books and baseball and fried-egg sandwiches.

Our dream of life will end as dreams do end, abruptly and completely, when the sun rises, when the light comes.

Your mother asked him if he would like to say grace, and he did, with an elegant simplicity that seemed almost wasted on macaroni and cheese.