One of the things that is wonderful about hymns is that they are a sort of universally shared poetry, at least among certain populations.

Marilynne Robinson

When I read 'Paradise Lost,' or 'Richard III,' it is clear that Milton and Shakespeare took real pleasure and satisfaction from creating these epitomes of evil.

Marilynne Robinson

For our purposes as human beings, the mind is the center of everything.

Marilynne Robinson

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

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

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

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

I remember when I was a child... walking into the woods by myself and feeling the solitude around me build like electricity and pass through my body with a jolt that made my hair prickle.

Marilynne Robinson

I did go through graduate school and I like to do research, to create something that has a certain objective solidity. The same thing influences my fiction to some degree, because, you know, my fiction is often based on history that I've read.

Marilynne Robinson

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

The mind, whatever else it is, is a constant of everyone's experience, and, in more ways than we know, the creator of the reality that we live within... Nothing is more essential to us.

Marilynne Robinson

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

It saddens me that Christians need to be reminded that awe is owed also to those who disagree with them, who believe otherwise than they do.

Marilynne Robinson

I've learned a lot about writing from listening to my students talk.

Marilynne Robinson

Many readers know my work first through 'Housekeeping,' simply because it was my only novel for a pretty long time.

Marilynne Robinson

My heroes are, above all, the great 19th-century Americans: Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson and the others. I love the way they think.

Marilynne Robinson

I doubt that I could create a character I loathed simply because when a character takes life, it is impossible not to be a little amazed by the phenomenon, and to find that the amazement has something of the quality of delight.

Marilynne Robinson

I find that the hardest work in the world... is to persuade Easterners that growing up in the West is not intellectually crippling.

Marilynne Robinson

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

I don't think I could write a novel that wasn't theological.

Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson Quotes

One of the things that is wonderful about hymns is that they are a sort of universally shared poetry, at least among certain populations.

When I read 'Paradise Lost,' or 'Richard III,' it is clear that Milton and Shakespeare took real pleasure and satisfaction from creating these epitomes of evil.

For our purposes as human beings, the mind is the center of everything.

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.

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.

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.

I remember when I was a child... walking into the woods by myself and feeling the solitude around me build like electricity and pass through my body with a jolt that made my hair prickle.

I did go through graduate school and I like to do research, to create something that has a certain objective solidity. The same thing influences my fiction to some degree, because, you know, my fiction is often based on history that I've read.

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.

The mind, whatever else it is, is a constant of everyone's experience, and, in more ways than we know, the creator of the reality that we live within... Nothing is more essential to us.

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.

It saddens me that Christians need to be reminded that awe is owed also to those who disagree with them, who believe otherwise than they do.

I've learned a lot about writing from listening to my students talk.

Many readers know my work first through 'Housekeeping,' simply because it was my only novel for a pretty long time.

My heroes are, above all, the great 19th-century Americans: Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson and the others. I love the way they think.

I doubt that I could create a character I loathed simply because when a character takes life, it is impossible not to be a little amazed by the phenomenon, and to find that the amazement has something of the quality of delight.

I find that the hardest work in the world... is to persuade Easterners that growing up in the West is not intellectually crippling.

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.

I don't think I could write a novel that wasn't theological.