Marilynne Robinson: Thing

“Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was.”

“… but it's your existence I love you for, mainly. Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined.”

“Well, but you two are dancing around in your iridescent little downpour, whooping and stomping as sane people ought to do when they encounter a thing so miraculous as water.”

“I think hope is the worst thing in the world. I really do. It makes a fool of you while it lasts. And then when it's gone, it's like there's nothing left of you at all… except what you can't be rid of.”

“It is a good thing to know what it is to be poor, and a better thing if you can do it in company.”

“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.”

“I think the attempt to defend belief can unsettle it, in fact, because there is always an inadequacy in argument about ultimate things.”

“I have always liked the phrase "nursing a grudge " because many people are tender of their resentments as of the thing nearest their hearts.”

“You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.”