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"She kept saying, "My husband will be back soon. He went for help. He'll be back." But that's the kind of lie people tell sometimes when they got only strangers to rely on. There's shame in that, so people lie."
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"Most of the men had simple souls. They could relate facts, but they said very little about what they dimly felt."
"A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant."
"We are, or rather our natural desire to evade pain and to attain pleasure is, the primary reason we do or say every single thing we do or say."
"I waited. Women talk when they want to. Or don't."
"Acceptable hypocrisy is often called politeness."
"Often a woman that doesn't have any business being in a fight is there because their ego thinks it can mend what other people can't. It's either superiority or a second chance to heal a wound they have, by meddling on your battlefield."
"No man is exempt from saying silly things, the mischief is to say them deliberately."
"Cruel people offer pity when they no longer feel threatened. However, kind people offer compassion and understanding regardless."
"Research has shown that smiling releases endorphins-the happy hormones that shift your physiology for improved well-being. When you smile and your eyes crinkle, your body releases chemicals that change the chemistry of your brain, lifting spirits, and reducing pain. Even when it is hard to smile and you are forcing it, positive changes take place in your physiology."
Explore more quotes by Marilynne Robinson
"My reputation is largely the creature of the kindly imaginings of my flock, whom I chose not to disillusion, in part because the truth had the kind of pathos in it that would bring on sympathy in its least bearable forms."
"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've often been sorry to see a night end, even while I have loved seeing the dawn come."
"A lot of Christian extremism has done a great deal to discredit religion the main religious traditions have abandoned their own intellectual cultures so drastically that no one has any sense of it other than the fringe."
"I should leave, she told herself once or twice, to savor the thought of their surprise, their regret. What a childish idea. Then Jack would leave, no doubt, so that should would come back, as she would have to do, and her father would be plunged in sorrow of which she was directly the cause, and which would not end in this life."
"I feel as if I am being left out, as though I'm some straggler and people can't quite remember to stay back for me."
"I want to overhear passionate arguments about what we are and what we are doing and what we ought to do. I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another. I want to believe there are geniuses scheming to astonish the rest of us, just for the pleasure of it."
"Language is music. Written words are musical notation. The music of a piece of fiction establishes the way in which it is to be read, and, in the largest sense, what it means. It is essential to remember that characters have a music as well, a pitch and tempo, just as real people do. To make them believable, you must always be aware of what they would or would not say, where stresses would or would not fall."
"So she prayed, Lord, give me patience. She knew that was not an honest prayer, and she did not linger over it....it cost her tears to think that her situation might actually be that desolate, so she prayed again for patience, for tact, for understanding--for every virtue that might keep her safe from conflicts that would be sure to leave her wounded, every virtue that might at least help her to preserve an appearance of dignity, for heaven's sake."
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