Quote

I do assume that a character or a place is inexhaustible and will always reward further attention.

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
Assuming
Rewards
Attention
Place
Character
Always
Inexhaustible
Reward
Assume

More quotes by 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
--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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The twinkling of an eye. That is the most wonderful expression. I've thought from time to time it was the best thing in life, that little incandescence you see in people when the charm of a thing strikes them, or the humor of it. 'The light of the eyes rejoiceth the heart.' That's a fact.
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
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
Image
The best essays come from the moment in which people really need to work something out.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
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
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
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
Image
The Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?
Marilynne Robinson
Image
Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
He [Christ] even restored the severed ear of the soldier who came to arrest Him - a fact that allows us to hope the resurrection will reflect a considerable attention to detail.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
Fiction that does not acknowledge this at least tacitly is not true.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
I think I am like most people in letting myself worry about things that didn't matter. Concepts like quotidian and humdrum prevented me for years from really absorbing the miraculous strangeness of bombing around a star on a tottering planet, of watching the world unfold in time.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
Boughton says he has more ideas about heaven every day. He said, Mainly I just think about the splendors of the world and multiply by two. I'd multiply by ten or twelve if I had the energy.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
It is one of the best traits of good people that they love where they pity. And this is truer of women than of men.
Marilynne Robinson
Image
Never, ever condescend to the reader. Assume you are writing for someone better and smarter than you are. This will protect you from conventionalism, faddishness, and cliché.
Marilynne Robinson