Quote

When we did not move or speak, there was no proof that we were there at all.

Marilynne Robinson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Marilynne Robinson
Age: 80
Born: 1943
Born: November 26
Essayist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Sandpoint
Idaho
Marilynne Summers Robinson
Marilynne S. Robinson
Proof
Move
Moving
Speak

More quotes by Marilynne Robinson

Image
Anybody who has read any biblical scholarship knows that every scholar struggles over completely intractable problems with the original texts, or what they have to work from. It's one of the great, powerful, mysterious objects that have come down through history. This does not translate into literal interpretation for me.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
... but it's your existence I love you for, mainly. Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
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 has come out of it, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
There was some sort of maze-learning experiment involved in my final grade and since I remember the rat who was my colleague as uncooperative, or perhaps merely incompetent at being a rat, or tired of the whole thing, I don't remember how I passed.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
Sometimes my doubt seems intuitive, but most likely it derives from an implausibility or a logical problem I may at first find difficult to identify and articulate. It is interesting to me to work through questions that arise in this way.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
For our purposes as human beings, the mind is the center of everything.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
There are several sources for my appreciation of pastors and the way they are described in this book. One of them is reading history and realizing that they had a profound creative impact on the Middle West and the settlement of the Middle West.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
I think hope is the worst thing in the world. I really do. It makes a fool of you while it lasts. And then when it's gone, it's like there's nothing left of you at all . . . except what you can't be rid of.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
I owe everything that I have done to the fact that I am very much at ease being alone.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
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.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
You have to live with your mind your whole life.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
To think that only faultless people are worthwhile seems like an incredible exclusion of almost everything of deep value in the human saga. Sometimes I can't believe the narrowness that has been attributed to God in terms of what he would approve and disapprove.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
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 quite by surprise. I've learned over time to allow that to happen, rather than to feel that I can simply solve the problem by continuous, grueling effort.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
In eternity this world will be like Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
People talk about how wonderful the world seems to children, and that's true enough. But children think they will grow into it and understand it, and I know very well that I will not, and would not if I had a dozen lives.
Marilynne Robinson