Marilynne Robinson

He wanted to assure her that his life was solitary and ascetic, as it was, almost past bearing, relieved by the library, occasional drunkenness, and lately by lunch with the Baptists. But he knew how this would sound, either pathetic or, better, like lying.

He had a way of anticipating memories he particularly did not want to have. That memory would be as unbearable as things are when there is nothing else to do but live with them.

Why were there an infinite number of ways to feel awkward? He believed this was a theological question having to do with man's place in the universe. But when he felt the true force of the question, he was always in the middle of an embarrassing emergency of some kind that paralyzed reflection.

She said, "Meaninglessness would come as a terrible blow to most people. It would be full of significance for them. So it wouldn't be meaningless. That's where I always end up. Once you ask if there is meaning, the only answer is yes. You can't get away from it."

But prison was terrible. It reduced him to absolute Jack, no matter what anyone thought of him. His great problem, after all, was other people. Prison was full of them.

It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire. Another reason why you must be careful of your health.

I can imagine Jesus befriending my grandfather, too, frying up some breakfast for him, talking things over with him, and in fact the old man did report several experiences of just that kind.

Experience had taught them that truth had sharp edges and hard corners, and could be seriously at odds with kindness.

"That is why it is called a Spirit," he said. "The word in Hebrew also means wind. 'The Spirit of God brooded on the face of the deep.' It is a sort of enveloping atmosphere."

I meant to leave you a reasonably candid testament to my better self, and it seems to me now that what you must see here is just an old man struggling with the difficulty of understanding what it is he's struggling with.

Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable – which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live.

I was trying to remember what birds did before there were telephone wires. It would have been much harder for them to roost in the sunlight, which is a thing they clearly enjoy doing.