Marilynne Robinson citations

“qu'arriverait-il si l'homme qui prétendait être son mari se détournait de Lila? Rien. Et s'il n'y avait finalement pas d'enfant? Il y aurait un soir et un matin. Le silence du monde lui faisait aussi mal que s'il se moquait ouvertement d'elle.”

“Vous ne pouvez jamais savoir quand vous voyez quelqu'un pour la dernière fois.”

“C'était à la fois une source de terreur et de confort pour moi que de paraître souvent invisible - que d'exister, en fait, d'une manière incomplète et minimale. J'avais l'impression de n'avoir aucun impact sur le monde, et d'avoir, en échange, le privilège de l'observer à son insu. Mais mon allusion à cette sensation d'existence spectrale eut une résonance particulière, et la sueur me couvrit tout le corps, me convainquant sur-le-champ de ma grossière existence corporelle.”

“I am grateful for all those dark years, even though in retrospect they seem like a long, bitter prayer that was answered finally.”

“In eternity this world will be like Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets.”

“This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.”

“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.”

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

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

“Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery.”

“These people who can see right through you never quite do you justice, because they never give you credit for the effort you're making to be better than you actually are, which is difficult and well meant and deserving of some little notice.”

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

“She knew that was not an honest prayer, and she did not linger over it. The right prayer would have been, Lord… I am miserable and bitter at heart, and old fears are rising up in me so that everything I do makes everything worse.”

“I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books.”

“There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, everyone of them sufficient”

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

“Grace has a grand laughter in it.”

“It seems to me people tend to forget that we are to love our enemies, not to satisfy some standard of righteousness but because God their Father loves them.”

“There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world's mortal insufficiency to us.”

“A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.”

“Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.”

“I don't know exactly what covetous is, but in my experience it is not so much desiring someone else's virtue or happiness as rejecting it, taking offense at the beauty of it.”

“People talk about how wonderful the world seems to children, and that's true enough. But children think they will grow into it and understand it, and I know very well that I will not, and would not if I had a dozen lives.”

“Christianity is a life, not a doctrine… I'm not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. I'm saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own.”

“Memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it.”

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

“Rejoice with those who rejoice." I have found that difficult too often. I was much better at weeping with those who weep.”

“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.”

“Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. But this is truest of the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any.”

“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.”

“And often enough, when we think we are protecting ourselves, we are struggling against our rescuer.”