Quotes by Marilynne Robinson

If we do not know the character of being itself - I have never seen anyone suggest that we do know it - then there is an inevitable superficiality in any claim to an exhaustive description of anything that participates in being. And the assertion of the existence, or the nonexistence, of God is the ultimate exhaustive description.

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.

I should leave, she told herself once or twice, to savor the thought of their surprise, their regret. What a childish idea. Then Jack would leave, no doubt, so that should would come back, as she would have to do, and her father would be plunged in sorrow of which she was directly the cause, and which would not end in this life.

So much had never been explained to her. They were that kind of family. Things necessary to know were passed along brother to brother, sister to sister, and this sufficient for most purposes, despite inevitable error and sensationalism.

Glory had rehearsed angry outbursts in anticipation of his arrival. She began to hope he would come so she could tell him exactly what she thought.

So much had never been explained to her. They were that kind of family. Things necessary to know were passed along brother to brother, sister to sister, and this sufficient for most purposes, despite inevitable error and sensational.

Even as children they had been good in fact, but also in order to be seen as good. There was something disturbingly like hypocrisy about it all...

At the very best there are two major problems with ideology. The first is that it does not represent or conform to or even address reality. It is a straight-edge ruler in a fractal universe. And the second is that it inspires in its believers the notion that the fault here lies with miscreant fact, which should therefore be conformed to the requirements of theory by all means necessary.

In that eternity of his, where everybody will be happy, how could he feel the lack of her, the loss of her?

If you thought dead was just dead, then you wouldnt have to worry about any of this.

Families will not be broken. Curse and expel them send their children wandering drown them in floods and fires and old women will make songs of all these sorrows and sit in the porches and sing them on mild evenings.

She knew there were words so terrible you heard them with your whole body. Guilty. And there were voices to say them. She knew there were people you might almost trust who would hear them, too, and be amazed, and still not really hear them because they know they were not the ones the words were spoken to.

Over my life as a teacher, women have been too quiet. Im quiet myself. I dont think I said three words the whole of graduate school.

A lot of Christian extremism has done a great deal to discredit religion the main religious traditions have abandoned their own intellectual cultures so drastically that no one has any sense of it other than the fringe.

Im a great admirer of secularism. At its best, I think its one of the best things that we have. I dont believe in insinuating religion into conversation. I dont believe in excluding it from conversation. I enjoy the fact that peoples innermost thoughts are their own.

I think about things like the fact that nobody knows what time is. Time is what? Nobody can describe it, even physics or math or anything else. But it is what we continuously experience. Its the state of our unfolding, in a way, and in that sense that the continuous reopening of reality is what I think of as, perhaps, a worldview.

“When something ought to be true then it proves to be a very powerful truth.”