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 on the porch and sing them on mild evenings. Marilynne Robinson More Quotes by Marilynne Robinson More Quotes From Marilynne Robinson Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters. Marilynne Robinson what-matters grace love-is We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of it, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege. Marilynne Robinson pain humanity thinking Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave - that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing. Marilynne Robinson eye men thinking 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. Marilynne Robinson genius believe art There is so little to remember of anyone - an anecdote, a conversation at a table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming habitual fondness not having meant to keep us waiting long. Marilynne Robinson dream home memories There is more beauty than our eyes can bear, precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. Marilynne Robinson eye honor hands Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life. Marilynne Robinson sunday garden rain Every sorrow suggests a thousand songs and every song recalls a thousand sorrows and so they are infinite in number and all the same. Marilynne Robinson sorrow numbers song He [Christ] even restored the severed ear of the soldier who came to arrest Him - a fact that allows us to hope the resurrection will reflect a considerable attention to detail. Marilynne Robinson afterlife soldier jesus I think to the degree writers are serious, there is a greater tendency for them to write to themselves, because they're trying to compose their own thoughts. They are trying to find out what is in their minds, which is the great mystery. Finding out who you are, what is in your head, and what kind of companion you are to yourself in the course of life. I do think people have very profound lives of which they say virtually nothing. Marilynne Robinson writing people thinking It was a source of both terror and comfort to me then that I often seemed invisible - incompletely and minimally existent, in fact. It seemed to me that I made no impact on the world, and that in exchange I was privileged to watch it unawares. Marilynne Robinson impact comfort watches We are part of a mystery, a splendid mystery within which we must attempt to orient ourselves if we are to have a sense of our own nature. Marilynne Robinson splendid mystery ifs My politics, and my religion as well, are based entirely on the loveliness and value of ordinary human lives. The creaky apparatus called politics shelters or oppresses or threatens these lives, and is therefore of interest. Marilynne Robinson loveliness values interest I was read to as a small child, I read on my own as soon as I could, and I recall being more or less overwhelmed again and again - if not by what the books actually said, by what they suggested, what they helped me to imagine. Marilynne Robinson overwhelmed book children I am grateful for all those dark years, even though in retrospect they seem like a long, bitter prayer that was answered finally. Marilynne Robinson grateful prayer dark There is no justice in love, no proportion in it, and there need not be, because in any specific instance it is only a glimpse or parable of an embracing, incomprehensible reality. It makes no sense at all because it is the eternal breaking in on the temporal. So how could it subordinate itself to cause or consequence? Marilynne Robinson justice reality needs To think that only faultless people are worthwhile seems like an incredible exclusion of almost everything of deep value in the human saga. Sometimes I can't believe the narrowness that has been attributed to God in terms of what he would approve and disapprove. Marilynne Robinson believe people thinking You build your mind, so make it into something you want to live with. Marilynne Robinson mind want This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it. Marilynne Robinson attention giving interesting Science can give us knowledge, but it cannot give us wisdom. Nor can religion, until it puts aside nonsense and distraction and becomes itself again. Marilynne Robinson nonsense distraction giving
