Marilynne Robinson quote: "I think probably one of the important things that happened to me was growing up in Idaho in the mountains, in the woods, and having a very strong presence of the wilderness around me. That never felt like emptiness. It always felt like presence."

My brother told me I was going to be a poet. I had a good brother. He did a lot of good brotherly wo...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the ton...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

It's not a man's working hours that is important, it is how he spends his leisure time.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

I'm a great admirer of secularism. At its best, I think it's one of the best things that we ...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

When I went to college, I majored in American literature, which was unusual then. But it meant that ...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

I doubt that I could create a character I loathed simply because when a character takes life, it is ...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

My first novel, 'Housekeeping,' was accepted by the first agent who read it, and bought by t...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I t...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

I listen to Bach a great deal. In general I like to listen to hymns and liturgical music.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house. Those outside can watch you...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You m...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

There's so much to be grateful for, words are poor things.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

A lot of Christian extremism has done a great deal to discredit religion; the main religious traditi...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

... but it's your existence I love you for, mainly. Existence seems to me now the most remarkable th...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Christianity is a life, not a doctrine . . . I'm not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave y...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

It seems to me people tend to forget that we are to love our enemies, not to satisfy some standard o...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Grace has a grand laughter in it.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and ...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

There is no justice in love, no proportion in it, and there need not be, because in any specific ins...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

One of the things that is wonderful about hymns is that they are a sort of universally shared poetry...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

I tend to think of the reading of any book as preparation for the next reading of it. There are alwa...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly plante...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

The locus of the human mystery is perception of this world. From it proceeds every thought, every ar...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Many readers know my work first through 'Housekeeping,' simply because it was my only novel ...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

My heroes are, above all, the great 19th-century Americans: Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson and the othe...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Earthly nature may be parsimonious, but the human mind is prodigal, itself an anomaly that in its we...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

There is so little to remember of anyone - an anecdote, a conversation at a table. But every memory ...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

It all means more than I can tell you. So you must not judge what I know by what I find words for.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

In eternity this world will be like Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic o...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occ...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

It seems to me there is less meanness in atheism, by a good measure. It seems that the spirit of rel...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

What if good institutions were in fact the product of good intentions? What if the cynicism that is ...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his ...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

There is clearly a feeling abroad that God smiled on our beginnings, and that we should return to th...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

That's the strangest thing about this life, about being in the ministry. People change the subject w...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, everyone of them sufficient
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

I am grateful for all those dark years, even though in retrospect they seem like a long, bitter pray...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

The twinkling of an eye. That is the most wonderful expression. I've thought from time to time it wa...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

It's better to have nothing,' the children were saying.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

How I wish you could have known me in my strength.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

A narrow pond would form in the orchard, water clear as air covering grass and black leaves and fall...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

It is better to have nothing, for at last even our bones will fall. It is better to have nothing.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Every sorrow suggests a thousand songs, and every song recalls a thousand sorrows, and so they are i...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable, and finally has co...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Their lives spun off the tilting world like thread off a spindle, breakfast time, suppertime, lilac ...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

When we did not move or speak, there was no proof that we were there at all.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable, and finally has co...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

I have never distinguished readily between thinking and dreaming. I know my life would be much diffe...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

I hated waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of ...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

When my mother left me waiting for her, [she] established in me the habit of waiting and expectation...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Everything that falls upon the eye is apparition, a sheet dropped over the world's true workings. Th...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

She conceived of life as a road down which one traveled, an easy enough road through a broad country...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Cain killed Abel, and the blood cried out from the ground--a story so sad that even God took notice ...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Ascension seemed at such times a natural law. If one added to it a law of completion - that everythi...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

When she had been married a little while, she concluded that love was half a longing of a kind that ...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Of my conception I know only what you know of yours. It occurred in darkness and I was unconsenting....
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

It is...difficult to describe someone, since memories are by their nature fragmented, isolated, and ...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

For need can blossom into all the compensation it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a th...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

You never know when you might be seeing someone for the last time.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Families will not be broken. Curse and expel them, send their children wandering, drown them in floo...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Imagine a Carthage sown with salt, and all the sowers gone, and the seeds lain however long in the e...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

It was a source of both terror and comfort to me then that I often seemed invisible — incompletely...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

I hated waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of ...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

You may have noticed that people in bus stations, if they know you also are alone, will glance at yo...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

We live on a little island of the articulable, which we tend to mistake for reality itself.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Oddly enough, my favorite genre is not fiction. I'm attracted by primary sources that are releva...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

I do have an impulse to sort of leverage what I say against something I disagree with.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

My grandfather once told her if you couldn't read with cold feet, there wouldn't be a literate soul ...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

The Bible for me is holy writ. It's a very straightforward thing, although I am not a literalist...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Teaching is a distraction and a burden, but it's also an incredible stimulus. And a reprieve, in...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Everything always bears looking into, astonishing as that fact is.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Glory went to look in on her father. He lay on his right side, his face composed, intent on sleep. H...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

„It all means more than I can tell you. So you must not judge what I know by what I find words for...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

When I read 'Paradise Lost,' or 'Richard III,' it is clear that Milton and Shakespea...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

I did go through graduate school and I like to do research, to create something that has a certain o...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

She put her arm around my shoulder and squeezed me. She whispered, "It's not the worst thing, Ruthie...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

My point in mentioning this is only to say that people who feel any sort of regret where you are con...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

There are so many works of the mind, so much humanity, that to disburden ourselves of ourselves is a...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

If there is anything in the life of any culture or period that gives good grounds for alarm, it is t...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

I have spent my life watching, not to see beyond the world, merely to see, great mystery, what is pl...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

To recognize our bias toward error should teach us modesty and reflection, and to forgive it should ...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

There is more beauty than our eyes can bear, precious things have been put into our hands and to do ...
MARILYNNE ROBINSON

I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me... All I ask is that you respect me as a huma...
JACKIE ROBINSON

It would make everything I worked for meaningless if baseball is integrated but political parties we...
JACKIE ROBINSON

When I got the role in 'Homeland,' it really opened something up. Other people respected me ...
ZULEIKHA ROBINSON

I do like to play the darker characters; I don't really know why.
ZULEIKHA ROBINSON

I'm mostly vegetarian.
ZULEIKHA ROBINSON

I like to frequent antiques shops and flea markets like the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.
ZULEIKHA ROBINSON

Only twice have I really had a hard time leaving a character. The first was my character in 'Rom...
ZULEIKHA ROBINSON

It took a lot of time to find my stride, and it was really humbling.
ZULEIKHA ROBINSON

'Lone Gunmen' was my first job, and I got a little cocky, thinking I'm brilliant and don...
ZULEIKHA ROBINSON

I did go through a phase where I played videogames quite often, but I haven't in a few years.
ZULEIKHA ROBINSON

I definitely like to play characters that don't fit any kind of mold; that are slightly offbeat,...
ZULEIKHA ROBINSON

I honestly never really watch the Emmys.
ZULEIKHA ROBINSON

The only time a friend has ever helped me in the industry was how I got my first job - that was thro...
ZULEIKHA ROBINSON

The most luxurious possession, the richest treasure anybody has, is his personal dignity.
JACKIE ROBINSON

The way I figured it, I was even with baseball and baseball with me. The game had done much for me, ...
JACKIE ROBINSON

Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he's losing; nobody wants you to quit w...
JACKIE ROBINSON

Many people resented my impatience and honesty, but I never cared about acceptance as much as I care...
JACKIE ROBINSON

Personally, I've learned about perseverance: when you hear the word 'No,' and when you h...
ANGELA ROBINSON

There are enormously gifted Episcopal priests around this church who are gay and lesbian, some of wh...
GENE ROBINSON

My mom is probably the only person shorter than me that I'm scared of. Still to this day. She...
NATE ROBINSON

When I was younger, I was a bit of a feisty fighter type of guy. That's something my father told...
NATE ROBINSON

We're a competitive family - we compete in everything we do: playing cards; if we're walking...
NATE ROBINSON

I love basketball, but I miss football every time I watch it.
NATE ROBINSON

I love for the crowd to feed off me, and I try to make my teammates feed off me.
NATE ROBINSON

I am a diehard Seahawks fan because I'm born and raised in Seattle.
NATE ROBINSON

Fans are awesome.
NATE ROBINSON

The NBA is all politics. It's about who you know.
NATE ROBINSON

I ran track for my school. I played football, but I didn't play for my high school; I played for...
NATE ROBINSON

Nobody really doubted me playing football, making it to the NFL. I was like, 'I know I can do th...
NATE ROBINSON

I've got the best shoe guy in the business.
NATE ROBINSON

I've seen my mother struggling, everything that she did to raise me and my brothers and my siste...
NATE ROBINSON

As a kid growing up, I wanted the Allen Iverson shoes that came out, the Questions. My dad got them ...
NATE ROBINSON

Mike D'Antoni was a cool coach, but he was just a bad person. He can coach. He was just mean for...
NATE ROBINSON

There's so many kids in the world who are told, 'You can't do this, you can't do tha...
NATE ROBINSON

Actually, I'm 5-8 and change without shoes. With shoes, 5-9.
NATE ROBINSON

I don't like one-foot jumpers like LeBron James. It looks better jumping off two feet. Every tim...
NATE ROBINSON

My least favorite subject? Uh... I didn't have a least favorite subject because, I mean, high sc...
NATE ROBINSON

Guys back in the day, we didn't have wallets. I never kept my money in my pocket; my money alway...
NATE ROBINSON

I'm going to be me, regardless of anything.
NATE ROBINSON

I always wanted to play with Kobe Bryant. I used to tease him all the time. Every time I was a free ...
NATE ROBINSON

You don't have to be the biggest, tallest, strongest guy to do whatever you want to do. You can ...
NATE ROBINSON

That's because we did not set out to make black music. We set out to make quality music that eve...
SMOKEY ROBINSON

I felt unhappy and trapped. If I left baseball, where could I go, what could I do to earn enough mon...
JACKIE ROBINSON

A new breed of Republicans has taken over the GOP. It is a new breed which is seeking to sell to Ame...
JACKIE ROBINSON

The Committee supports the idea that there should be, within the University of California, a campus ...
ABRAHAM ROBINSON

On June 22, 1793, Vancouver's Discovery and Chatham anchored in Klekane Inlet. Archibald Menzies...
EDEN ROBINSON

The main reserve of the Haisla Nation hugs the northwest coast of British Columbia, about 500 miles ...
EDEN ROBINSON

The First Nations Financial Transparency Act insulted the integrity of the very people in our commun...
EDEN ROBINSON

I'm a novelist from the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations of British Columbia, both small coasta...
EDEN ROBINSON

The Haisla named this point Obela. Not so long ago, the bay was lined with longhouses and canoes, to...
EDEN ROBINSON

Where I come from, people will spit at you if they think you support Enbridge.
EDEN ROBINSON

The land and the ocean are living, breathing entities that supported us, clothed us, fed us, and nur...
EDEN ROBINSON

A potlatch is similar to a court case in that both are prohibitively expensive; both involve lengthy...
EDEN ROBINSON

I guess you'd call me an independent, since I've never identified myself with one party or a...
JACKIE ROBINSON

Co-ops are one of the few affordable housing options for students that want life close to campus.
ALAN ROBINSON

Blood is not all that important. It's what you have in your heart and how you carry it.
ALAN ROBINSON

I didn't know much about my Native American ancestry, but as I got older I became more interested in...
ALAN ROBINSON

We had about 20 people and cooked two turkeys.
ALAN ROBINSON

One of my teenage daughters has set a goal to read the great classics. I wish I'd done that at her a...
ALAN ROBINSON

I usually get down with a little Violent Femmes in the summer. You know, 'Blister In The Sun....
NICK ROBINSON

I was first influenced by a friend in fifth grade when he brought a Walkman to school and was listen...
DARREN ROBINSON

A good hitting instructor is able to mold his teaching to the individual. If a guy stands on his hea...
BILL ROBINSON

No. We were huntin',
AARON ROBINSON

We'll find 'em, ... They're in this drainage somewhere. We might have to hike our a's off, but we'll...
AARON ROBINSON

We had very effective meetings. They were long, but we got a lot done. Each group got a fair chance.
AARON ROBINSON

Overall, I think treasury is on the right track. Every group coming into treasury has a fair chance ...
AARON ROBINSON

We just came here for fun, and it's been great. I wasn't expecting this many fans.
AARON ROBINSON

This is usually a slow time, the lull after Christmas.
AARON ROBINSON

A little excitement will be added, we hope.
AARON ROBINSON

It will be similar this year.
AARON ROBINSON

It was really cool. ... I wasn't expecting it. But I worked hard for it. I think I deserved it.
AARON ROBINSON

We liked the architecture of our old neighborhood, and we didn't want to sacrifice that charm for su...
AARON ROBINSON

It was difficult to step away. I've always been an athlete. And to give that up was extremely da...
DAVID ROBINSON

The plan last year didn't reflect the priorities of today's students. We started from scratch early ...
ADAM ROBINSON

We have a once-in-a- generation opportunity to do this. We're calling on today's students to make th...
ADAM ROBINSON

We're going to defend our position. We deliver what our members want.
ADAM ROBINSON

I wear blazers several times a week. I like them because they have a good cut, but they're a bit mor...
ADAM ROBINSON

Our commitment to caring for our wounded service members returning from Iraq, as well as our other b...
ADAM ROBINSON

A number of elements make up this process, and I know that the authorities are now working on their ...
ADAM ROBINSON

We always thought this was going to be slow to build. It's going to take time and we didn't expect t...
ADAM ROBINSON

We never comment on market rumor and speculation. We monitor all our markets constantly and talk to ...
ADAM ROBINSON

This is part of what we do as a part of military medicine, ... You have given much of yourself and t...
ADAM ROBINSON

It's something we are trying to carry on to the younger generation to keep the hobby alive.
ADAM ROBINSON

The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential... these are the keys ...
EDDIE ROBINSON

Blacks have had to learn to protect themselves by being cynical but not cynical enough to slam the d...
JACKIE ROBINSON

Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already d...
JAMES ROBINSON

I never criticize a player until they are first convinced of my unconditional confidence in their ab...
JOHN ROBINSON

I think any player will tell you that individual accomplishments help your ego, but if you don't win...
DAVID ROBINSON

Close don't count in baseball. Close only counts in horseshoes and grenades.
FRANK ROBINSON

Listen, I was the first black manager in baseball and there was incredible pressure. I don't blame a...
FRANK ROBINSON

The many of us who attain what we may and forget those who help us along the line we've got to remem...
JACKIE ROBINSON

Widows are divided into two classes -- the bereaved and relieved.
VICTOR ROBINSON

Cruelty is a part of nature, at least of human nature, but it is the one thing that seems unnatural ...
ROBINSON JEFFERS

Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.
MARIA ROBINSON

There is nobody as enslaved as the fanatic, the person in whom one impulse, one value, has assumed a...
FRANK ROBINSON

Close don't count in baseball. Close only counts in horseshoes and grenades.
FRANK ROBINSON

Laugh as much as you breathe and love as long as you live.
MARIA ROBINSON

I am opposed to censorship. Censors are pretty sure fools. I have no confidence in the suppression o...
JAMES ROBINSON

We were in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. It's a nice town, but it's aggressively quaint. They've ...
NICK ROBINSON

My protest about the post exchange seating bore some results. More seats were allocated for blacks, ...
JACKIE ROBINSON

Jason Behr and Amanda Brooks were cool to work with. Jason and I are fast friends to this day.
CRAIG ROBINSON

Initial excitement over the announcement that Enbridge was building a pipeline to Kitimat dampened c...
EDEN ROBINSON

I think if we go back and check our record, the Negro has proven beyond a doubt that we have been mo...
JACKIE ROBINSON

Creativity is putting your imagination to work, and it's produced the most extraordinary results...
KEN ROBINSON

My dad said, 'Stay humble, and you gotta work harder than everybody else.' My mom said, '...
NATE ROBINSON

I don't mind being a tourist at all, and a gawker. I just walk around.
ANN ROBINSON

The answer is not to standardize education, but to personalize and customize it to the needs of each...
KEN ROBINSON

You can be creative in anything - in math, science, engineering, philosophy - as much as you can in ...
KEN ROBINSON

When comics came along in the 1930s there was a talent pool waiting. And one reason is so many areas...
JERRY ROBINSON

There is a close analogy between organic chemistry in its relation to biochemistry and pure mathemat...
ROBERT ROBINSON

My dad was in the Navy, and I was raised with a strong commitment to service.
DAVID ROBINSON

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.
JACKIE ROBINSON

I think probably one of the important things that happened to me was growing up in Idaho in the mountains, in the woods, and having a very strong presence of the wilderness around me. That never felt like emptiness. It always felt like presence.

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Marilynne Robinson

I think probably one of the important things that happened to me was growing up in Idaho in the mountains, in the woods, and having a very strong presence of the wilderness around me. That never felt like emptiness. It always felt like presence.

Marilynne Robinson

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