620 Quotes by Marilynne Robinson

it's hard to find time to think about Kansas.

I believe there are visions that come to us only in memory, in retrospect.

Dawn and its excesses always reminded me of heaven, a place where I have always known I would not be comfortable.

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.

It's television that makes things seem important, whether they are or not.

We lost track of which was which, but we were fairly sure that some of the creatures had been borne away still in the darkness of paganism, and that worried us a good deal.

Those who can't hope can still wish.

Trees sound different at night, and they smell different too.

In destitution, even of feeling or purpose, a human being is more hauntingly human and vulnerable to kindnesses because there is the sense that things should be otherwise, and then the thought of what is wanting and what alleviation would be, and how the soul could be put at ease, restored. At home. But the soul finds its own home if it ever has a home at all.