... but it's your existence I love you for, mainly. Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined. Marilynne Robinson More Quotes by Marilynne Robinson More Quotes From Marilynne Robinson Protestantism, of course, is much more explicitly divided into different traditions - the Pentecostals, the Anglicans. But there is the main tradition of Protestantism that comes out of the Reformation and that produced people like Kant and Hegel and so on, who are not normally thought of as being people writing in a theological tradition, although Hegel, of course, wrote theology his whole life. Marilynne Robinson differentwritingpeople I had been reading about [John] Calvin for years and had been studying the English Renaissance for many more years, and it had never occurred to me to think of them together. I learned that Calvin was the most widely read writer in England in Shakespeare's lifetime. He was translated and published in many editions. Marilynne Robinson readingyearsthinking There are several sources for my appreciation of pastors and the way they are described in this book. One of them is reading history and realizing that they had a profound creative impact on the Middle West and the settlement of the Middle West. Marilynne Robinson readingappreciationbook I used to write on a big old couch, but I gave that away. I was wise enough to give it to my son, so if it turns out that the couch was essential to my work, at least the decision to be rid of it is not irreversible. Marilynne Robinson decisionwiseworkson My brother told me I was going to be a poet. I had a good brother. He did a lot of good brotherly work. Marilynne Robinson goodmebrotherwork When I lecture, under almost all circumstances, I write a new lecture for the occasion. It helps me think. It helps me make demands of myself that I would not otherwise make. Marilynne Robinson newmyselfthinkme My Calvinism persuades me that we are open to God, in the sense that we are not delimited, not organisms with fixed attributes in the manner of the other creatures, but are instead participants in a reality that utterly exceeds our powers of description. Marilynne Robinson openmegodreality Teaching is a distraction and a burden, but it's also an incredible stimulus. And a reprieve, in a way. When you're trying to work on something and it's not going anywhere, you can go to school and there's a two-and-a-half-hour block of time in which you can accomplish something. Marilynne Robinson youworktimeschool When I went to college, I majored in American literature, which was unusual then. But it meant that I was broadly exposed to nineteenth-century American literature. I became interested in the way that American writers used metaphoric language, starting with Emerson. Marilynne Robinson languagecollegeliteratureway My family was pious and Presbyterian mainly because my grandfather was pious and Presbyterian, but that was more of an inherited intuition than an actual fact. Marilynne Robinson moreintuitionfamilygrandfather 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. It's 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. Marilynne Robinson nobodyexperiencetimereality I like major theology. I like Karl Barth, and I like John Calvin, and I like Martin Luther. The scale of thinking and the power of integration that they're capable of from thinking in that scale is something that's really unique to theology. Marilynne Robinson somethinguniquepowerthinking One of the things about writing fiction is that you create people that you feel, more or less, as though you know. Marilynne Robinson feelyouwritingpeople The Bible for me is holy writ. It's a very straightforward thing, although I am not a literalist. Marilynne Robinson i-ammestraightforwardbible When I'm writing fiction, I'm sort of interested by the fact that somehow or other I can have the feeling of actually seeing things through someone else's eyes. Marilynne Robinson eyessomeonefeelingi-can I'm a great admirer of secularism. At its best, I think it's one of the best things that we have. I don't believe in insinuating religion into conversation. I don't believe in excluding it from conversation. I enjoy the fact that people's innermost thoughts are their own. Marilynne Robinson thoughtsbestpeoplereligion I really enjoyed my kids. They were good boys, you know, and interesting. And they didn't wear me out. Marilynne Robinson goodknowmeyou 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. Marilynne Robinson owngreatdonereligion I like to read in my own house, in any of the rooms I always mean to paint or otherwise improve and never do. Every detail is so familiar to me that it makes almost no claim on my attention. Marilynne Robinson nevermemy-ownattention I tend to think of the reading of any book as preparation for the next reading of it. There are always intervening books or facts or realizations that put a book in another light and make it different and richer the second or the third time. Marilynne Robinson lightreadingtimebook
