620 Quotes by Marilynne Robinson

It was that feeling that she had had walking along beside him that put the notion in her mind. It comes from being alone too much. Things matter that wouldn’t if you had a regular life.

Forever after, the thought of her would be painful, because it had been pleasant. Strange how that is.

How we think about ourselves has everything to do with how we act toward one another.

For me, writing has always felt like praying, even when I wasn’t writing prayers, as I was often enough. You feel that you are with someone.

I was trying to remember what birds did before there were telephone wires. It would have been much harder for them to roost in the sunlight, which is a thing they clearly enjoy doing.

Why do I love the thought of you old? That first twinge of arthiritis in your knee is a thing I imagine with all the tenderness I felt when you showed me your loose tooth. I wish I could help you carry the weight of many years. But the Lord will have that fatherly satisfaction.

When did I become so unlike other people? Either it was when I followed Sylvie across the bridge, and the lake claimed us, or it was when my mother left me waiting for her, and established in me the habit of waiting and expectation which makes any present moment most significant for what it does not contain.

And she was old, too. For a woman being old just means not being young, and all the youth had been worked out of her before it had really even set in.

It is clearly true that the reflex of disparagement is no more compatible with rigorous inquiry than the impulse to glorify.