Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Summers Robinsonis an American novelist and essayist best known for her novels Housekeepingand Gilead...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth26 November 1943
CountryUnited States of America
again almost arbitrary experience science stimulate taken
I read things like theology, and I read about science, 'Scientific American' and publications like that, because they stimulate again and again my sense of the almost arbitrary given-ness of experience, the fact that nothing can be taken for granted.
hardest west work
I find that the hardest work in the world... is to persuade Easterners that growing up in the West is not intellectually crippling.
accepted agent bought editor experience
My first novel, 'Housekeeping,' was accepted by the first agent who read it, and bought by the first editor who read it. In general, my experience with publication has been gentle and gratifying.
readers simply time work
Many readers know my work first through 'Housekeeping,' simply because it was my only novel for a pretty long time.
constant creator essential experience ways whatever
The mind, whatever else it is, is a constant of everyone's experience, and, in more ways than we know, the creator of the reality that we live within... Nothing is more essential to us.
capable john karl major martin power scale
I like major theology. I like Karl Barth, and I like John Calvin, and I like Martin Luther. The scale of thinking and the power of integration that they're capable of from thinking in that scale is something that's really unique to theology.
admirer believe best enjoy fact great innermost religion thoughts
I'm a great admirer of secularism. At its best, I think it's one of the best things that we have. I don't believe in insinuating religion into conversation. I don't believe in excluding it from conversation. I enjoy the fact that people's innermost thoughts are their own.
I don't think I could write a novel that wasn't theological.
believe god means profoundly
I don't claim to know what it means to say that we are made in the image of God, but I profoundly and instinctively believe it and all that it implies.
above great heroes love
My heroes are, above all, the great 19th-century Americans: Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson and the others. I love the way they think.
actual family inherited mainly pious
My family was pious and Presbyterian mainly because my grandfather was pious and Presbyterian, but that was more of an inherited intuition than an actual fact.
became exposed interested meant unusual writers
When I went to college, I majored in American literature, which was unusual then. But it meant that I was broadly exposed to nineteenth-century American literature. I became interested in the way that American writers used metaphoric language, starting with Emerson.
fact interested somehow sort
When I'm writing fiction, I'm sort of interested by the fact that somehow or other I can have the feeling of actually seeing things through someone else's eyes.
demands helps otherwise
When I lecture, under almost all circumstances, I write a new lecture for the occasion. It helps me think. It helps me make demands of myself that I would not otherwise make.