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I hated waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation.
Marilynne Robinson
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Marilynne Robinson
Age: 80
Born: 1943
Born: November 26
Essayist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Sandpoint
Idaho
Marilynne Summers Robinson
Marilynne S. Robinson
Waiting
Composed
Life
Complaints
Expectation
Entirely
Hated
Seemed
Expectations
Particular
Complaint
More quotes by Marilynne Robinson
Fiction that does not acknowledge this at least tacitly is not true.
Marilynne Robinson
When we did not move or speak, there was no proof that we were there at all.
Marilynne Robinson
Now that I look back, it seems to me that in all that deep darkness a miracle was preparing. So I am right to remember it as a blessed time, and myself as waiting in confidence, even if I had no idea what i was waiting for.
Marilynne Robinson
I think probably one of the important things that happened to me was growing up in Idaho in the mountains, in the woods, and having a very strong presence of the wilderness around me. That never felt like emptiness. It always felt like presence.
Marilynne Robinson
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.
Marilynne Robinson
We have demythologized prematurely, that we've actually lost the vocabulary for discussing reality at its largest scales. The idea that myth is the opposite of knowledge, or the opposite of truth, is simply to disallow it. It is like saying poetry is the opposite of truth.
Marilynne Robinson
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.
Marilynne Robinson
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
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
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
When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters.
Marilynne Robinson
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 it and also crave it is beyond dispute.
Marilynne Robinson
She knew that was not an honest prayer, and she did not linger over it. The right prayer would have been, Lord . . . I am miserable and bitter at heart, and old fears are rising up in me so that everything I do makes everything worse.
Marilynne Robinson
Of my conception I know only what you know of yours. It occurred in darkness and I was unconsenting... By some bleak alchemy what had been mere unbeing becomes death when life is mingled with it.
Marilynne Robinson
Most institutions of higher learning in the West were founded by and for religious denominations. The supposed alienation of education and faith is a recent phenomenon. At the same time, neither education nor the lack of it predisposes one to faith.
Marilynne Robinson
I would advise you against defensiveness on priciple. it precludes the best eventualities along with the worst. At the most basic level it expresses a lack of faith.
Marilynne Robinson
And there is no living creature, though the whims of eons had put its eyes on boggling stalks and clamped it in a carapace, diminished it to a pinpoint and given it a taste for mud and stuck it down a well or hid it under a stone, but that creature will live on if it can.
Marilynne Robinson
--There is no justice in love...it is only the glimpse or parable of an incomprehensible reality... the eternal breaking in on the the temporal.
Marilynne Robinson
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
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