Quotes from Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

Well, but you two are dancing around in your iridescent little downpour, whooping and stomping as sane people ought to do when they encounter a thing so miraculous as water.

That is to say, I pray for you. And there's an intimacy in it. That's the truth.

We lost track of which was which, but we were fairly sure that some of the creatures had been borne away still in the darkness of paganism, and that worried us a good deal.

Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was.

Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.

There is more beauty than our eyes can bear, precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.

I felt, as I have often felt, that my failing the truth could have no bearing at all on the Truth itself, which could never conceivably be in any sense dependent on me or on anyone.

How I wish you could have known me in my strength.

It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire.

I'll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful.I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.

It seems to me some people just go around lookin' to get their faith unsettled. That has been the fashion for the last hundred years or so.