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People don't acknowledge loneliness in themselves, and don't appreciate its benefits, the reflection and attentiveness that come with it, the deepened acquaintance with oneself.

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
Reflection
Oneself
Benefits
Appreciate
Attentiveness
Come
Deepened
People
Acquaintance
Acknowledge
Loneliness

More quotes by Marilynne Robinson

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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
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I have always liked the phrase nursing a grudge because many people are tender of their resentments as of the thing nearest their hearts.
Marilynne Robinson
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The attention of the congregation is a major part of the attention that the pastor gives to his or her utterance. It's very exceptional. I don't know anyone who doesn't enjoy a good sermon. People who are completely nonreligious know a good sermon when they hear one.
Marilynne Robinson
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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
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My politics, and my religion as well, are based entirely on the loveliness and value of ordinary human lives. The creaky apparatus called politics shelters or oppresses or threatens these lives, and is therefore of interest.
Marilynne Robinson
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Rejoice with those who rejoice. I have found that difficult too often. I was much better at weeping with those who weep.
Marilynne Robinson
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When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters. There are so many things you would never think to tell anyone. And I believe they may be the things that mean most to you, and that even your own child would have to know in order to know you well at all.
Marilynne Robinson
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If you had to summarize the Old Testament, the summary would be: stop doing this to yourselves.
Marilynne Robinson
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I listen to Bach a great deal. In general I like to listen to hymns and liturgical music.
Marilynne Robinson
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... 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
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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
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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
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You have to live with your mind your whole life.
Marilynne Robinson
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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
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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
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Fiction may be, whatever else, an exercise in the capacity for imaginative love, or sympathy, or identification.
Marilynne Robinson
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Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.
Marilynne Robinson
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When something ought to be true then it proves to be a very powerful truth.
Marilynne Robinson
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Every sorrow suggests a thousand songs and every song recalls a thousand sorrows and so they are infinite in number and all the same.
Marilynne Robinson
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It is a good thing to know what it is to be poor, and a better thing if you can do it in company.
Marilynne Robinson