620 Quotes by Marilynne Robinson

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.

Eliminate the overwhelming cost of phantom wars and fools' errands, and humankind might begin to balance its books. After all, its only debts are to itself.

„It all means more than I can tell you. So you must not judge what I know by what I find words for.” (p 114)

„It all means more than I can tell you. So you must not judge what I know by what I find words for.” (Gilead, p 114)

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.

I want to overhear passionate arguments about what we are and what we are doing and what we ought to do. I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another. I want to believe there are geniuses scheming to astonish the rest of us, just for the pleasure of it.

What if good institutions were in fact the product of good intentions? What if the cynicism that is supposed to be rigor and the acquisitiveness that is supposed to be realism are making us forget the origins of the greatness we lay claim to - power and wealth as secondary consequences of the progress of freedom, or, as Whitman would prefer, Democracy?

Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was.

I remember once my father and my grandfather were sitting on the porch together, crackling and shelling black walnuts. They loved each other's company, when they weren't at each other's throats, which meant when they were silent, as they were that day.