I 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 RobinsonI had been reading about [John] Calvin for years and had been studying the English Renaissance for many more years, and it had never occurred to me to think of them together. I learned that Calvin was the most widely read writer in England in Shakespeare's lifetime. He was translated and published in many editions.
Marilynne RobinsonWhen things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters.
Marilynne RobinsonIt is an amazing thing to watch people laugh, the way it sort of takes them over. Sometimes they really do struggle with it . . . so I wonder what it is and where it comes from, and I wonder what it expends out of your system, so that you have to do it till you're done, like crying in a way, I suppose, except that laughter is much more easily spent.
Marilynne Robinson