The accessibility and effective immortality of actual information is a magnificent phenomenon, a beautiful extension of human consciousness. It is too bad people find so many ways to abuse the internet, but that's just how things are.
Marilynne RobinsonI like a book to be full of the memory of what it is, a voice in an endless conversation, and yet at the same time to be new.
Marilynne RobinsonThis is not to say that joy is a compensation for loss, but that each of them, joy and loss, exists in its own right and must be recognised for what it is ... So joy can be joy and sorrow can be sorrow, with neither of them casting either light or shadow on the other.
Marilynne RobinsonTo crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing - the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again.
Marilynne Robinsonpity and charity may be at root an attempt to propitiate the dark powers that have not touched us yet.
Marilynne RobinsonJohn Calvin's theology emphasizes the sanctity of conscience, the sanctity of companionate marriage, and the obligation of those in power to attend to the well-being of the people in general, especially the poor. Interestingly, for the interpretation of Hamlet, for example, he forbids even the thought of revenge. This is not the Calvin of myth, but when the Elizabethans read him there was no such myth, nor would there be now, if he were read.
Marilynne Robinson