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Marilynne Robinson Quotes

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Famous Marilynne Robinson Quotes

“What with the lake and the railroads, and what with blizzards and floods and barn fires and forest fires and the general availability of shotguns and bear traps and homemade liquor and dynamite, what with the prevalence of lonliness and religion and the rages and ecstasies they induce, and the closeness of families, violence was inevitable.”

FamilyViolence In Society
Book:Housekeeping ~ by MARILYNNE ROBINSON ~ First Edition ~ 1st Printing 1980
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“Language is music. Written words are musical notation. The music of a piece of fiction establishes the way in which it is to be read, and, in the largest sense, what it means. It is essential to remember that characters have a music as well, a pitch and tempo, just as real people do. To make them believable, you must always be aware of what they would or would not say, where stresses would or would not fall.”

LanguageFictionMusicMusical Notation
Book:When I Was A Child I Read Books
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“For need can blossom into all the compensation it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing-the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel, fosters us, smooths our hair, and brings us wild strawberries.”

NeedsLossCraving
Book:Housekeeping
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“Of my conception I know only what you know of yours. It occurred in darkness and I was unconsenting. I walked forever through reachless oblivion, in the mood of one smelling night-blooming, and suddenly-My ravishers left their traces in me, male and female, and over the months I rounded, grew heavy, until the scandal could no longer be concealed and oblivion expelled me. But this is I have in common with all my kind. By some bleak alchemy what had been mere unbeing becomes death when life is mingled with it. So they seal the door against our returning.”

Profound
Book:Housekeeping
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“My point in mentioning this is only to say that people who feel any sort of regret where you are concerned will suppose you are angry, and they will see anger in what you do, even if you're just quietly going about a life of your own choosing. They make you doubt yourself, which, depending on cases, can be a severe distraction and a waste of time. This is a thing I wish I had understood much earlier than I did.”

RegretPerceptionAnger
Book:Gilead
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“I saw a bubble float past my window, fat and wobbly and ripening towards that dragonfly blue they turn just before they burst. So I looked down at the yard and there you were, you and your mother, blowing bubbles at the cat, such a barrage of them that the poor beast was beside herself at the glut of opportunity. She was actually leaping in the air, our insouciant Soapy! Some of the bubbles drifted up through the branches, even above the trees. You were too intent on the cat to see the celestial consequences of your worldly endeavours. They were very lovely. Your mother is wearing her blue dress and you are wearing your red shirt and you were kneeling on the ground together with Soapy between and that effulgence of bubbles rising, and so much laughter. Ah, this life, this world.”

LifeChildhoodLaughterMemoryBubbles
Book:Gilead
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“Buildings dream at night, and their dreams have a particular character. Or perhaps at night they awaken. There is nothing cordial or accommodating about buildings, whatever they might let people believe. The stresses of simply standing there, preposterous constructions, Euclidian like nothing in nature, the ground heaving under them, rain seeping in while their joints go slack with rot. They speak disgruntlement, creaks and groans, and less nameable sounds that suggest presence of the kind that is conjured only by emptiness. Grudges, plaints, and threats, an interior conversation, not meant to be heard, that would startle anyone. Jack had never realized before that the city, the parts he knew of it, might despise its human infestation.”

HumansCitiesArchitectureShelterBuildingsUrbanityEnclosures
Book:Jack
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“There is something about human beings that makes our 'love for the world' often look like hatred for it. Jesus said 'Do not think I have come to bring peace on earth. I have not come to bring peace but a sword.' (Matthew 10:34) He said a number of things. 'Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you' (Matthew 5:44), for example. And "Put your sword back in it's place, for all who live by the sword will perish by the sword.' (Matthew 26:52) But for whatever reason - as a Calvinist I might propose our fallen state - human beings have found the obedience to the commandment to love one another modified by the statement I quoted first (which does not have the form of a commandment although it is taken to have the force of one). And it has inspired the response: 'Send me, Lord!' with far more passion and consistency than the commandment which tradition says is the last Jesus gave us: that we 'love one another' (John 15:17). As a consequence, Christians have often loved their enemies to death. Their enemies often being other Christians.”

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Author:Marilynne Robinson
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“Two or three of the ladies had pronounced views on points of doctrine, particularly sin and damnation, which they never learned from me. I blame the radio for sowing a good deal of confusion where theology is concerned. And television is worse. You can spend forty years teaching people to be awake to the fact of mystery and then some fellow with no more theological sense than a jackrabbit gets himself a radio ministry and all your work is forgotten. I do wonder where it will end. p. 208”

Teaching The Faith
Book:Gilead
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“Everywhere the crisis of the private financial system has been transformed into a tale of slovenly and overweening government that perpetuates and is perpetuated by a dependent and demanding population... For about ten days the crisis was interpreted as a consequence of the ineptitude of the highly paid, and then it transmogrified into a grudge against the populace at large.”

Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Book:When I Was A Child I Read Books
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“C'était à la fois une source de terreur et de confort pour moi que de paraître souvent invisible - que d'exister, en fait, d'une manière incomplète et minimale. J'avais l'impression de n'avoir aucun impact sur le monde, et d'avoir, en échange, le privilège de l'observer à son insu. Mais mon allusion à cette sensation d'existence spectrale eut une résonance particulière, et la sueur me couvrit tout le corps, me convainquant sur-le-champ de ma grossière existence corporelle.”

ExistenceInvisibleContemplationDécalage
Book:Housekeeping
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“I felt just the way I imagine the shade of poor old Samuel must have felt when the witch dragged him up from Sheol. "Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up?" In fact, I had spent the morning darkness praying for the wisdom to do well by John Ames Boughton, and then when he woke me, I was immediately aware that my sullen old reptilian self would have handed him over to the Philistines for the sake of a few more minutes' sleep.”

HumorSleepWaking Up
Book:Gilead
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“I think to the degree writers are serious, there is a greater tendency for them to write to themselves, because they're trying to compose their own thoughts. They are trying to find out what is in their minds, which is the great mystery. Finding out who you are, what is in your head, and what kind of companion you are to yourself in the course of life. I do think people have very profound lives of which they say virtually nothing.”

PeopleThinkingWritingTryingMindKindCoursesGreaterMysterySeriousDegreesFindingsWho You AreProfoundTendenciesCompanionCourse Of Life
Author:Marilynne Robinson
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