Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Madeleine L'engle, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Madeleine L'engle quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 520 Madeleine L'engle quotes for you to read and share.
Holiness ... is nothing we can *do* ... It is gift, sheer gift, waiting there to be recognized and received. We do not have to be qualified to be holy. We do not have to be qualified to be whole, or healed.Made -- Madeleine L'engle
I suspect that in every good marriage there are times when love seems to be over. Sometimes these desert lines are simply the only way to the next oasis, which is far more lush and beautiful after the desert crossing than it could possibly have been without it. -- Madeleine L'engle
I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, "Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me." -- Madeleine L'engle
I am slowly coming to understand with all my heart as well as my head that love is not a feeling. It is a person. -- Madeleine L'engle
If I sit for a while, then my impatience, crossness, frustration, are indeed annihilated, and my sense of humor returns. -- Madeleine L'engle
Prayer was never meant to be magic,' Mother said.
'Then why bother with it?' Suzy scowled.
'Because it's an act of love,' Mother said. -- Madeleine L'engle
You don't know the meaning of moderation, do you, my darling? A happy medium is something I wonder if you'll ever learn. -- Madeleine L'engle
Pray all you like, ask anything you want, but don't forget that he never promised he'd say yes. He never guaranteed us anything. Not anything at all. Except one thing. Just one thing ...
That he cares ... That is all. Nothing else. -- Madeleine L'engle
Maybe the theatre isn't any place for a reasonable human being after all. It keeps your emotions in such a constant state of upheaval. It's really terribly wearing. I wonder if I could stand it, one emotional upset after the other just going on and on for the rest of my life. -- Madeleine L'engle
It seemed to travel with her, to sweep her aloft in the power of song, so that she was moving in glory among the stars, and for a moment she, too, felt that the words Darkness and Light had no meaning, and only this melody was real. -- Madeleine L'engle
If we are to be aware of life while we are living it, we must have the courage to relinquish our hard-earned control of ourselves. -- Madeleine L'engle
Probably the worst thing that has happened to our understanding of reality has been the acceptance of ourselves as consumers. -- Madeleine L'engle
The primary needs can be filled without language. We can eat, sleep, make love, build a house, bear children, without language. But we cannot ask questions. We cannot ask, 'Who am I? Who are you? Why? -- Madeleine L'engle
We human beings grow through our failures, not our virtues. -- Madeleine L'engle
In the evening of life we shall be judged on love, and not one of us is going to come off very well, and were it not for my absolute faith in the loving forgiveness of my Lord I could not call on him to come. -- Madeleine L'engle
And as long as there are even a few who belong to the Old Music, you are still our brothers and sisters. -- Madeleine L'engle
We don't want to feel less when we have finished a book; we want to feel that new possibilities of being have been opened to us. We don't want to close a book with a sense that life is totally unfair and that there is no light in the darkness; we want to feel that we have been given illumination. -- Madeleine L'engle
Let's be exclusive' Charles Wallace said. -- Madeleine L'engle
Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point. French. Pascal. The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing. -- Madeleine L'engle
Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith. Faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically. -- Madeleine L'engle
Prayer is whenever we consciously try to get in contact with the numinous, the ineffable, the marvelous. -- Madeleine L'engle
Love isn't how you feel. It's what you do. I've never had a feeling in my life. As a matter of fact, I matter only with earth people. -- Madeleine L'engle
We are suspicious of grace. We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift. -- Madeleine L'engle
A great painting or symphony or play, doesn't diminish us, but enlarges us, and we, too, want to make our own cry of affirmation to the power of Creation behind the Universe .. -- Madeleine L'engle
To grow up
is to find
the small part you are playing
in the extraordinary drama
written by
somebody else. -- Madeleine L'engle
If we knew each morning that there was going to be another morning, and on and on and on, we'd tend not to notice the sunrise,or hear the birds, or the waves rolling into shore. We'd tend not to treasure our time with the people we love. -- Madeleine L'engle
Creativity is a way of living life, no matter what our vocation, or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts ... -- Madeleine L'engle
You're good in school. Everybody likes you." "For all the most unimportant reasons," Calvin said. "There hasn't been anybody, anybody in the world I could talk to. Sure, I can function on the same level as everybody else, I can hold myself down, but it isn't me. -- Madeleine L'engle
Like it or not, we either add to the darkness of indifference and out-and-out evil which surrounds us or we light a candle to see by. -- Madeleine L'engle
From the shoulders, slowly a pair of wings unfolded, wings made of rainbows, of light upon water, of poetry.
Calvin fell to his knees.
"No," Mrs. Whatsit said, though her voice was not Mrs. Whatsit's voice. "Not to me Calvin. Never to me. Stand up. -- Madeleine L'engle
That's something I've noticed about food: whenever there's a crisis if you can get people to eating normally things get better. -- Madeleine L'engle
I saw two beings in the hues of the youth
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill ... And both were young
and one was beautiful
-The Dream, Canto II
Lord Byron -- Madeleine L'engle
I am not some kind of computer. Only machines have glib answers for everything. -- Madeleine L'engle
Integrity, like humility, is a quality which vanishes the moment we are conscious of it in ourselves. We see it only in others. -- Madeleine L'engle
My protagonists, male and female, are me. -- Madeleine L'engle
A great piece of literature does not try to coerce you to believe it or agree with it. A great piece of literature simply is . It is a vehicle of truth, but it is not a blueprint, and we tend to confuse the two. -- Madeleine L'engle
Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous. -- Madeleine L'engle
On a planet that has given in... you must prepare to be very strong. -- Madeleine L'engle
I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow. -- Madeleine L'engle
If our language is watered down, then mankind becomes less human, and less free ... -- Madeleine L'engle
A life lived in chaos is an impossibility. -- Madeleine L'engle
Lords of space and Lords of time,
Lords of blessing, Lords of grace,
Who is in the warmer clime?
Who will follow Madoc's rhyme?
Blue will alter time and space. -- Madeleine L'engle
Life is not easy and comfortable, with nothing ever going wrong as long as you buy the right product. It's not true that if you have the right insurance everything is going to be fine. That's not what it's really like. Terrible things happen. And those are the things we learn from. -- Madeleine L'engle
Are anybody's parents typical? -- Madeleine L'engle
It seemed strange that with so much softness in her actual construction Mamma gave such a feeling of hardness. When -- Madeleine L'engle
Art is an affirmation of life, a rebuttal of death. And here we blunder into paradox again, for during the creation of any form of art, art which affirms the value and the holiness of life, the artist must die. To serve a work of art, great or small, is to die, to die to self. -- Madeleine L'engle
Lords of melody and song,
Lords of roses burning bright,
Blue will right the ancient wrong,
Though the way is dark and long,
Blue will shine with loving light. -- Madeleine L'engle
Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person. -- Madeleine L'engle
They've never known a time when people drank rain water because it was pure, or could eat snow, or swim in any river or brook. The last time I drove to Washington the traffic was so bad that I could have made better time with a horse. -- Madeleine L'engle
...and I know he's something more. I guess I'll just have to accept it without understanding it... Maybe that's really the point I was trying to put across. -- Madeleine L'engle
We are all broken, we human creatures, and to pretend we're not is to inhibit healing. -- Madeleine L'engle
Who makes you least confused?"
"Calvin" There was no hesitation here. "When I'm with Calvin, I don't mind being me"
"You mean he makes you more you, don't you?"
"I guess you could put it that way. -- Madeleine L'engle
The degree of talent, the size of the gift, is immaterial. All artists must listen, but not all hear great symphonies, see wide canvasses, conceive complex, character-filled novels. No
matter, the creative act is the same, and it is an act of faith. -- Madeleine L'engle
The artist cannot hold back; it is impossible, because writing, or any other discipline of art, involves participation in suffering, in the ills and the occasional stabbing joys that come from being part of the human drama. -- Madeleine L'engle
Because we fail to listen to each other's stories, we are becoming a fragmented human race. -- Madeleine L'engle
Your intuition and your intellect should be working together ... making love. That's how it works best. -- Madeleine L'engle
Goodbyes are not easy, but I'm ready to move on. I'm not reluctant, Emma, not holding back. I don't have answers to the questions, but I have some good questions. I have loved life, but I believe that life is to be loved, it is a gift. -- Madeleine L'engle
Meg, I give you your faults."
"My faults!" Meg cried.
"Your faults."
"But I'm always trying to get rid of my faults!"
"Yes," Mrs. Whatsit said. "However, I think you'll find they'll come in very handy on Camazotz. -- Madeleine L'engle
If we knew ahead of time what was going to happen we'd be - we'd be like the people on Camazotz, with no lives of our own, with everything all planned and done for us. -- Madeleine L'engle
Tell your sister I'm all right," Mrs Whatsit said to Charles. "Tell her my intentions are good." "The road to hell is paved with good intentions," Charles intoned. -- Madeleine L'engle
Remember the root word of humble and human is the same: humus: earth. We are dust. We are created; it is God who made us and not we ourselves. But we were made to be co-creators with our maker. -- Madeleine L'engle
We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes. -- Madeleine L'engle
Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth. -- Madeleine L'engle
In the literary world today, Christianity has pretty well replaced sex as the present pet taboo, not only because Christianity is so often distorted by Christians as well as non-Christians, but because it is too wild and free for the timid. -- Madeleine L'engle
But I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children's books ask questions, and make the reader ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone's universe. -- Madeleine L'engle
Matter and energy are the same thing, that size is an illusion, and that time is a material substance. -- Madeleine L'engle
I don't know if they're really like everybody else, or if they're able to pretend they are. -- Madeleine L'engle
Time is inextricably tangled up with place, and can be measured only against place. Time has meaning only in relation to its position in space, the movement of a planet about a sun, of a night through stars. -- Madeleine L'engle
IT was the most horrible, the most repellent thing she had ever seen, far more nauseating then anything she had ever imagined with her consious mind, or that had ever tormented her in her most terrible nightmares. -- Madeleine L'engle
Unlearning is the choice, conscious or unconscious, of any real artist. And it is the true sign of maturity. -- Madeleine L'engle
But we know that just because we want something does not mean that we will get what we want, -- Madeleine L'engle
Ah," she said, "that's ever so much better," and took both boots and shook them out over the sink. "My stomach is full and I'm warm inside and out and it's time I went home. -- Madeleine L'engle
In my tadpole stage I was delivered to Metron Ariston and transmogrified, and here am I. My name is Sporos, by the way, and I do not like your thinking names like mouse-creature and shrimp-thing at me. -- Madeleine L'engle
The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness. -- Madeleine L'engle
Compassion is nothing one feels with the intellect alone. Compassion is particular; it is never general. -- Madeleine L'engle
As paredes tem ouvidos. (Portuguese: The walls have ears.) -- Madeleine L'engle
Meg, when people don't know who they are, they are open either to being Xed, or Named -- Madeleine L'engle
The truth is that I hate to think about other people reading my books," Miranda said. "It's like watching someone go through the box of private stuff that I keep under my bed. -- Madeleine L'engle
Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling. -- Madeleine L'engle
So I know, with a sense of responsibility that hits me with a cold fist in the pit of my stomach, that what I am is going to make more difference to my own children and those I talk to and teach than anything I tell them. -- Madeleine L'engle
Science never threatens God - it opens up more possibilities. -- Madeleine L'engle
Creative scientists and saints expect revelation and do not fear it. Neither do children. But as we grow up and we are hurt, we learned not to trust. -- Madeleine L'engle
The artist is not separate from the work and therefore cannot judge it. -- Madeleine L'engle
Love. That was what she had that IT did not have. -- Madeleine L'engle
We do not know what things look like, as you say," the beast said. "We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing, this seeing. -- Madeleine L'engle
If we accept that we have at least an iota of free will, we cannot throw it back the moment things go wrong. Like a human parent, God will help us when we ask for help, but in a way that will make us more mature, more real, not in a way that will diminish us. -- Madeleine L'engle
Behind the violence of the birthing of galaxies and stars and planets came a quiet and tender melody, a gentle love song. All the raging of creation, the continuing hydrogen explosions on the countless suns, the heaving of planetary bodies, all was enfolded in a patient, waiting love. -- Madeleine L'engle
A community to be truly community, must have a quality of unselfconsciousness about it. -- Madeleine L'engle
Meg, don't you think you'd make a better adjustment to life if you faced facts?"
I do face facts," Meg said.
They're lots easier to face than people, I can tell you. -- Madeleine L'engle
The virgin birth has never been a major stumbling block in my struggle with Christianity; it's far less mind boggling than the Power of all Creation stooping so low as to become one of us. -- Madeleine L'engle
Lords of blue and Lords of gold,
Lords of wind and waters wild,
Lords of time that's growing old,
When will come the season mild?
When will come blue Madoc's child? -- Madeleine L'engle
Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing had vanished, and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure. -- Madeleine L'engle
Sometimes when we aren't looking, the holiness comes breaking through like a rainbow. -- Madeleine L'engle
We don't have to know everything at once. We just do one thing at a time, as it is given us to do. -- Madeleine L'engle
Anger is not bitterness. Bitterness can go on eating at a man's heart and mind forever. Anger spends itself in its own time. -- Madeleine L'engle
Love is the one surprise. -- Madeleine L'engle
Great art transcends its culture and touches on that which is eternal. -- Madeleine L'engle
Because I am a storyteller I live by words. Perhaps music is a purer art form. It may be that when we communicate with life on another planet, it will be through music, not through language or words. -- Madeleine L'engle
I am convinced that each work of art, be it a great work of genius or something very small, has its own life, and it will come to the artist, the composer or the writer or the painter, and
say, "Here I am: compose me; or write me; or paint me"; and the job of the artist is to serve the work. -- Madeleine L'engle
A new year can begin only because the old year ends. -- Madeleine L'engle
A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe. -- Madeleine L'engle
All will be redeemed in God's fullness of time, all, not just the small portion of the population who have been given the grace to know and accept Christ. All the strayed and stolen sheep. All the little lost ones. -- Madeleine L'engle
There're a lot of things you don't understand." Zachary smoldered his gaze at me. "I came looking for you, and then when I found out where you were, suddenly it didn't seem worth it. It wasn't you. It was everything and nothing. Life. Ma's death. Talking to anybody. Not worth it -- Madeleine L'engle
There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation. -- Madeleine L'engle
If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are. -- Madeleine L'engle
Wait until tomorrow to find what tomorrow holds. -- Madeleine L'engle
Accepting that we are angry is a healthy and appropriate response as long as we don't get stuck in it. Acknowledging it is one way of going through it. -- Madeleine L'engle
Remember, he hasn't much imagination. Or, rather, it's been frozen for a long while and hasn't had time to thaw. -- Madeleine L'engle
During the long drag of years before our youngest child went to school, my love for my family and my need to write were in acute conflict. The problem was really that I put two things first. My husband and children came first. So did my writing. Bump. -- Madeleine L'engle
God understands that part of us which is more than what we think we are. -- Madeleine L'engle
If our lives are truly "hid with Christ in God," the astounding thing is that this hiddenness is revealed in all that we do and say and write. What we are is going to be visible in our art, no matter how secular (on the surface) the subject may be. -- Madeleine L'engle
For an artist is not a consumer, as our commercials urge us to be. An artist is a nourisher and a creator who knows that during the act of creation there is collaboration. We do not create alone. -- Madeleine L'engle
It strikes me as somewhat odd that the people who use God's name most frequently, both in life and in literature, usually don't believe in him. -- Madeleine L'engle
I like to take the time out to listen to the trees, much in the same way that I listen to a sea shell, holding my ear against the rough bark of the trunk, hearing the inner singing of the sap. It's a lovely sound, the beating of the heart of the tree. -- Madeleine L'engle
This wasn't the first time that I'd come close to death, but it was the first time I'd been involved in this part of it, this strange, terrible saying goodbye to someone you've loved. -- Madeleine L'engle
It was a star," Mrs. Whatsit said sadly. "A star giving up its life in battle with the Thing. It won, oh, yes, my children, it won. But it lost its life in the winning. -- Madeleine L'engle
In art we are once again able to do all the things we have forgotten; we are able to walk on water; we speak to the angels who call us; we move, unfettered, among the stars. -- Madeleine L'engle
When we make ourselves vulnerable, we do open ourselves to pain, sometimes excruciating pain. The more people we love, the more we are liable to be hurt, and not only by the people we love, but for the people we love. -- Madeleine L'engle
For that moment, at least, all our doors and windows were wide open; we were not carefully shutting out God's purifying light, in order to feel safe and secure; we were bathed in the same light that burned and yet did not consume the bush. We walked barefoot on holy ground. -- Madeleine L'engle
You've got to learn to walk through a pigpen and not get dirty. -- Madeleine L'engle
We must pray when prayer seems dry as dust; we must write when we are physically tired, when our hearts are heavy, when our bodies are in pain. -- Madeleine L'engle
If we allow our "high creativity" to remain alive, we will never be bored. We can pray, standing in line at the super market. Or we can be lost in awe at all the people around us, their lives full of glory and tragedy, and suddenly we will have the beginnings of a painting, a story, a song. -- Madeleine L'engle
I know writers who write only when inspiration comes. How would Isaac Stern play if he played the violin only when he felt like it? He would be lousy. -- Madeleine L'engle
One of the many sad results of the Industrial Revolution was that we came to depend more than ever on the intellect, and to ignore the intuition with its symbolic thinking. -- Madeleine L'engle
In the act of creativity, the artist lets go the self-control which he normally clings to and is open to riding the wind. -- Madeleine L'engle
My dear, I'm seldom sure of anything. Life at best is a precarious business, and we aren't told that difficult or painful things won't happen, just that it matters. It matters not just to us but to the entire universe. -- Madeleine L'engle
We are a generation which is crying loudly to tear down all structure in order to find freedom, and discovering, when order is demolished, that instead of freedom we have death. -- Madeleine L'engle
The artist, if he is not to forget how to listen, must retain the visionwhich includes angels and dragons and unicorns, and all the lovely creatures which our world would put in a bos marked, 'Children Only. -- Madeleine L'engle
Refusing to accept God's love because we're unworthy - of course we're unworthy! - is another golden calf. -- Madeleine L'engle
And sometimes when we listen, we are led into places we do not expect, into adventures we do not always understand. -- Madeleine L'engle
A truly great work of art breaks beyond the bounds of the period and culture in which it is created, so final judgement on a current book has to be deferred until it can be seen outside this present moment. -- Madeleine L'engle
If the artist reflects only his own culture, then his works will die with that culture. But if his works reflect the eternal and universal, they will revive. -- Madeleine L'engle
People become trustworthy when they are trusted. -- Madeleine L'engle
Sometimes idiosyncrasies which used to be irritating become endearing, part of the complexity of a partner who has become woven deep into our own selves. -- Madeleine L'engle
Embracing her now would have been like trying to hug a sunbeam -- Madeleine L'engle
There is no way that you can read the entire Bible seriously and take every word literally. Contradictions start in the first chapter of Genesis. There are two Creation stories, two stories of the making of Adam and Eve. And that is all right. The Bible is still true. -- Madeleine L'engle
Schooling, instead of encouraging the asking of questions, too often discourages it. -- Madeleine L'engle
The novelist helps us to see things we might not notice otherwise. -- Madeleine L'engle
When I have something to say that I think will be too difficult for adults, I write it in a book for children. Children are excited by new ideas; they have not yet closed the doors and windows of their imaginations. Provided the story is good ... nothing is too difficult for children. -- Madeleine L'engle
With our human limitations we're not always able to understand the explanations. -- Madeleine L'engle
The child is aware of unlimited potential, and this munificence is one of the joys of creativity.
Those of use who struggle in our own ways, small or great, trickles or rivers, to create, are constantly having to unlearn what the world would teach us... -- Madeleine L'engle
We are going to your father," Mrs. Which said.
"But where is he?" Meg went over to Mrs. Which and stamped as though she were as young as Charles Wallace.
Mrs. Whatsit answered in a voice that was low but quite firm. "On a planet that has given in. So you must prepare to be very strong. -- Madeleine L'engle
Meg's eyes were too bright. I wish human beings couldn't have feelings. I am having feelings. They hurt. -- Madeleine L'engle
What can we give a child when there is nothing left? All we have, I think, is the truth, the truth that will set him free, not limited, provable truth, but the open, growing, evolving truth that is not afraid. -- Madeleine L'engle
If I'm not free to fail, I'm not free to take risks and everything in life that's worth doing involves a willingness to take a risk. -- Madeleine L'engle
You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it? Yes. Mrs. Whatsit said. You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you. -- Madeleine L'engle
Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. - Mrs. Whatsit -- Madeleine L'engle
You are given the form, but you must write the sonnet for yourself. -- Madeleine L'engle
Life ... is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. -- Madeleine L'engle
There is little character or loveliness in the face of someone who has shunned risk, avoided suffering and rejected life -- Madeleine L'engle
Nothing really important in life is in the realm of provable fact. -- Madeleine L'engle
When we are writing, or painting, or composing, we are, during the time of creativity, freed from normal restrictions, and are opened to a wider world, where colors are brighter, sounds clearer, and people more wondrously complex than we normally realize. -- Madeleine L'engle
Scar tissue was the strongest tissue in the human body. -- Madeleine L'engle
When the bright angel dominates, out comes a great work of art, a Michelangelo David or a Beethoven symphony. -- Madeleine L'engle
We do not love each other without changing each other. -- Madeleine L'engle
All real art is, in its true sense, religious; it is a religious impulse; there is no such thing as a non-religious subject. But much bad or downright sacrilegious art depicts so-called religious subjects. -- Madeleine L'engle
The reaper lacks the eyes to hold him back; -- Madeleine L'engle
Now I am setting out into the unknown. It will take me a long while to work through the grief. There are no shortcuts; it has to be gone through. -- Madeleine L'engle
It is not always on the great or the important that the balance of the universe depends. -- Madeleine L'engle
I do not think that I will ever reach a stage when I will say, "This is what I believe. Finished." What I believe is alive ... and open to growth -- Madeleine L'engle
I wish that we worried more about asking the right questions instead of being so hung up on finding answers. -- Madeleine L'engle
We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledging that they cannot take us all the way. -- Madeleine L'engle
When a character wants to do one thing and I want him to do another, the character is usually right. -- Madeleine L'engle
Everything we do, our entire interior monologue, is prayer. -- Madeleine L'engle
We know you have a great mind and all, Mother, but you don't have much sense. -- Madeleine L'engle
There is in God, some say, a deep but dazzling darkness. -- Madeleine L'engle
I think that all artists, regardless of degree of talent, are a painful, paradoxical combination of certainty and uncertainty, of arrogance and humility, constantly in need of reassurance, and yet with a stubborn streak of faith in their own validity no matter what. -- Madeleine L'engle
If you're going to care about the fall of the sparrow you can't pick and choose who's going to be the sparrow. It's everybody. -- Madeleine L'engle
I would like to travel light on this journey of life, to get rid of the encumbrances I acquire each day. -- Madeleine L'engle
I simply take him into my heart, and then put him into God's hand. -- Madeleine L'engle
I was only just beginning to realize what a horribly destructive thing hate is, how it destroys inwards as well as outwards. I -- Madeleine L'engle
All children are artists, and it is an indictment of our culture that so many of them lose their creativity, their unfettered imaginations, as they grow older. -- Madeleine L'engle
Why, my Lord, did you have to bring
Me down from the safety of my hill
Into the danger of your will? (David p. 34) -- Madeleine L'engle
I rebel against death, yet I know that it is how I respond to death's inevitability that is going to make me less or more fully alive. -- Madeleine L'engle
To write for children at all is an act of faith. -- Madeleine L'engle
Meg cut up some celery and mixed it in with the tuna. After a moment's hesitation she opened the refrigerator door and brought out a jar of little sweet pickles.-Though why I'm doing it for her I don't know, she thought, as she cut them up.-I don't trust her one bit. -- Madeleine L'engle
It's hard to let go anything we love. We live in a world which teaches us to clutch. But when we clutch we're left with a fistful of ashes. -- Madeleine L'engle
Love can't be pinned down by a definition, and it certainly can't be proved, any more than anything else important in life can be proved. -- Madeleine L'engle
One foggy night I was walking the dogs down the lane and heard the geese, very close overhead, calling, calling, their marvellous strange cry, as they flew by. I think that is what our own best prayer must sound like when we send it up to heaven. -- Madeleine L'engle
Think of the person you love the most in the world. Do you really see them visually? Or don't you see on a much deeper level? It's lots easier to visualize people we don't know very well. -- Madeleine L'engle
For the things that are seen are temporal, but things that are unseen are eternal. -- Madeleine L'engle
We do not know what things look like. We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing,this seeing. -Aunt Beast -- Madeleine L'engle
Anything that stretches the mind is a help to the potential author. -- Madeleine L'engle
In my dreams, I never have an age. -- Madeleine L'engle
Infinity is present in each part. A loving smile contains all art. The motes of starlight spark and dart. A grain of sand holds power and might. -- Madeleine L'engle
But my memories are like a fire in winter - whenever I'm cold I can warm my hands at them.
- Ditta -- Madeleine L'engle
Mother says she can never stay mad at Daddy no matter how hard she tries. And Daddy says, 'Stay mad! You won't even let me get mad at you,' and then they laugh. Aren't you sorry for people who don't laugh, Vicky?"
"Yes. And people who don't love music and books."
"And people," John said. -- Madeleine L'engle
On the other side of pain, there is still love. -- Madeleine L'engle
A mystic is a person who sees the facts as inadequate. -- Madeleine L'engle
Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist. -- Madeleine L'engle
As Emmanuel, Cardinal Suhard says, To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist. -- Madeleine L'engle
But BEing time is never wasted time. When we are BEing, not only are we collaborating with chronological time, but we are touching on kairos, and are freed from the normal restrictions of time. -- Madeleine L'engle
The creative impulse can be killed, but it cannot be taught ... What a teacher can do ... in working with children, is to give the flame enough oxygen so that it can burn. As far as I'm concerned, this providing of oxygen is one of the noblest of all vocations. -- Madeleine L'engle
Remember you have to go at his speed not your own ... Adults take longer at this kind of thing then we do, particularly adults ... who [haven't] tried new thoughts for a long time ... but sometimes adults can go deeper then we can, if we're patient. -- Madeleine L'engle
Ach,' she heard someone saying, 'I left mein ceinture dans le shower ce morgen. Quelle dope ich bin! -- Madeleine L'engle
You see, though we travel together, we travel alone. -- Madeleine L'engle
Oh, girl, not woman, more than child, Which of us two is the more wild? So -- Madeleine L'engle
Conversion for me was not a Damascus Road experience. I slowly moved into an intellectual acceptance of what my intuition had always known. -- Madeleine L'engle
If you want to write ... keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair. -- Madeleine L'engle
When we celebrate Christmas, we are celebrating that amazing time when the Word that shouted all the galaxies into being limited all power and, for love of us, came to us in the powerless body of a human baby. -- Madeleine L'engle
When we are self-conscious, we cannot be wholly aware; we must throw ourselves out first. This throwing ourselves away is the act of creativity. -- Madeleine L'engle
Art should communicate with as many people as possible. -- Madeleine L'engle
One of the most helpful tools a writer has is his journals. Whenever someone asks how to become an author, I suggest keeping a journal. -- Madeleine L'engle
In art, either as creators or participators, we are helped to remember some of the glorious things we have forgotten, and some of the terrible things we were asked to endure ... -- Madeleine L'engle
Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else. -- Madeleine L'engle
Oh child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the affect of extreme complication.
-Aunt Beast -- Madeleine L'engle
She knew that the freedom was in herself, just as the prison had been. -- Madeleine L'engle
Meg took a batch of forks from the drawer and turned them over and over, looking at them. "I'm all confused again." "Oh, so 'm I," Calvin said gaily. "But now at least I know we're going somewhere. -- Madeleine L'engle
Friends
or lovers
are not always available to each other. Inner turmoils can cause us to be unhearing when someone needs us, to need to receive understanding when we should be giving understanding. -- Madeleine L'engle
We're not peculiar."
"Oh, yes, you are. Don't you realize that in my world my parents are peculiar because they'd never been divorced? Basically because it would have been too much trouble. But you live in a world where not only are your parents not divorced, they appear to love each other -- Madeleine L'engle
I share Einstein's affirmation that anyone who is not lost in rapturous awe at the power and glory of the mind behind the universe "is as good as a burnt out candle." -- Madeleine L'engle
One reason nearly half my books are for children is the glorious fact that the minds of children are still open to the living word; in the child, nightside and sunside are not yet separated; fantasy contains truths which cannot be stated in terms of proof. -- Madeleine L'engle
No matter how true I believe what I am writing to be, if the reader cannot also participate in that truth, then I have failed. -- Madeleine L'engle
To be half a century plus is wonderfully exciting, because I haven't lost any of my past, and I am free to stand on the rock of all that the past has taught me as I look to the future. -- Madeleine L'engle
Lords of spirit, Lords of breath,
Lords of fireflies, stars, and light,
Who will keep the world from death?
Who will stop the coming night?
Blue eyes, blue eyes, have the sight. -- Madeleine L'engle
Severe illness isolates those in close contact with it, because it inevitably narrows the focus of concern. To a certain extent this can lead to healing, but not if the circle of concern is so tight that it cannot be broken into, or out of. -- Madeleine L'engle
Now the red eyes and the light above seemed to bore into Charles, and again the pupils fo the little boy's eyes contracted. When the final point of black was lost in blue he turned away from the red eyes, looked at Meg, and smiled sweetly, but the smile was not Charles Wallaces smile. -- Madeleine L'engle
I cannot find it in me to believe that God enjoys long faces and scowls at merriment. -- Madeleine L'engle
I cannot believe that God wants punishment to go on interminably any more than does a loving parent. The entire purpose of loving punishment is to teach, and it lasts only as long as is
needed for the lesson. And the lesson is always love. -- Madeleine L'engle
Because of the very nature of the world as it is today, our children receive in school a heavy load of scientific and analytic subjects, so it is in their reading for fun, for pleasure, that they must be guided into creativity. -- Madeleine L'engle
Agape love is ... profound concern for the well-being of another, without any desire to control that other, to be thanked by that other, or to enjoy the process. -- Madeleine L'engle
The concentration of a small child at play is analogous to the concentration of the artist of any discipline. In real play, which is real concentration, the child is not only outside time, he is outside himself. -- Madeleine L'engle
Don't be afraid ... " We need this reassurance. Even for those of us who believe implicitly in angels, to be confronted by one is an awesome thing." -- Madeleine L'engle
It was not an end, it was a beginning. -- Madeleine L'engle
Hate hurts the hater more'n the hated. -- Madeleine L'engle
There are dozens and dozens of ways to be a family ... Family tends to happen. -- Madeleine L'engle
If it's bad art, it's bad religion, no matter how pious the subject. -- Madeleine L'engle
Reading about the response of people in stories, plays, poems, helps us to respond more courageously and openly at our own moments of turning. -- Madeleine L'engle
When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens. -- Madeleine L'engle
I like the fact that in ancient Chinese art the great painters always included a deliberate flaw in their work: human creation is never perfect. -- Madeleine L'engle
To create a work of art, great or small, is work, hard work, and work requires discipline and order. -- Madeleine L'engle
Art is communication. -- Madeleine L'engle
All forms of art are consciousness expanders, and I am convinced that they will take us further, and more consciously, than drugs. -- Madeleine L'engle
To look at a work of art and then to make a judgement as to whether or not it is art, and whether or not it is Christian, is presumptuous. -- Madeleine L'engle
When we can play with the unself-conscious concentration of a child, this is: art: prayer: love. -- Madeleine L'engle
Great art always transcends its culture, while lesser art merely reflects it. -- Madeleine L'engle
Believing takes practice. -- Madeleine L'engle
Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself. -- Madeleine L'engle
If our love for each other really is participatory, then all other human relationships nourish it; it is inclusive, never exclusive. -- Madeleine L'engle
Love of music, of sunsets and sea; a liking for the same kind of people; political opinions that are not radically divergent; a similar stance as we look at the stars and think of the marvelous strangeness of the universe - these are what build a marriage. And it is never to be taken for granted. -- Madeleine L'engle
We find what we are looking for. If we are looking for life and love and openness and growth, we are likely to find them. If we are looking for witchcraft and evil, we'll likely find them, and we may get taken over by them. -- Madeleine L'engle
Women must be very gentle with men as they, as well as women, seek to regain the lost wholeness for which they were destined. -- Madeleine L'engle
He's not good for you," Omio said. "He wants too much. He is someone who takes. He does not give. -- Madeleine L'engle
He knew what she wanted, and he wanted it, too; he was ready, but not, despite her gorgeousness, with Tiglah. Tiglah was not worth losing his ability to touch a unicorn. -- Madeleine L'engle
Hate is like cancer, separate from the normal cells, devouring and not being nourished, annihilating itself along with everything it attacks. -- Madeleine L'engle
You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children. -- Madeleine L'engle
I love, therefore I am vulnerable. -- Madeleine L'engle
Where there is an unreconciled quarrel, everybody suffers -- Madeleine L'engle
It is ... through the world of the imagination which takes us beyond the restrictions of provable fact, that we touch the hem of truth. -- Madeleine L'engle
In so-called primitive societies there are two words for power, mana and taboo: the power which creates and the power which destroys; the power which is benign and the power which is malign. Odd that we have retained in our vocabulary the word for dangerous power, taboo, and have lost mana. -- Madeleine L'engle
The discoveries don't come when you're looking for them. They come when for some reason you've let go conscious control. -- Madeleine L'engle
Thou cannot harm a butterfly, without troubling a star. -- Madeleine L'engle
There was no light. The darkness was deep and there was no dazzle. -- Madeleine L'engle
Was she strong enough to allow both of them to be themselves? Bahama had instilled in her an honoring of promises, but she could not keep her promise unless she was willing to allow Nik to be Nik, not a projection of someone who could fill in all her empty spaces, heal all her wounds. -- Madeleine L'engle
There's no such thing as an unbreakable scientific rule, because, sooner or later, they all seem to get broken. Or to change. -- Madeleine L'engle
If she could give love to IT perhaps it would shrivel up and die, for she was sure that IT could not withstand love. -- Madeleine L'engle
Nothing, no one, is too small to matter. What you do is going to make a difference. -- Madeleine L'engle
Creativity comes from accepting that you're not safe, from being absolutely aware, and from letting go of control. It's a matter of seeing everything - even when you want to shut your eyes. -- Madeleine L'engle
How do we teach a child our own, or those in a classroom to have compassion: to allow people to be different; to understand that like is not equal; to experiment; to laugh; to love; to accept the fact that the most important questions a human being can ask do not have or need answers. -- Madeleine L'engle
The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly. -- Madeleine L'engle
Goodness has never been a guarantee of safety. -- Madeleine L'engle
The very young woman can be charming and delightful and pretty but only a mature woman can be beautiful; and only a mature man can be strong enough to be tender. -- Madeleine L'engle
when I'm mad I don't have room to be scared. -- Madeleine L'engle
George MacDonald gives me renewed strength during times of trouble
times when I have seen people tempted to deny God
when he says, The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his. -- Madeleine L'engle
As long as we know what it's about, then we can have the courage to go wherever we are asked to go, even if we fear that the road may take us through danger and pain. -- Madeleine L'engle
If we aren't capable of being hurt we aren't capable of feeling joy. -- Madeleine L'engle
But what is real? In the Bible we are constantly being given glimpses of a reality quite different from that taught in school, even in Sunday school. And these glimpses are not given to the qualified; there's the marvel. It may be that the qualified feel no need of them. -- Madeleine L'engle
The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions. -- Madeleine L'engle
Man is; it matters to him; this is terrifying unless it matters to God, too, because this is the only possible reason we can matter to ourselves ... -- Madeleine L'engle
She seems to have had the ability to stand firmly on the rock of her past while living completely and unregretfully in the present. -- Madeleine L'engle
Maybe that's the best part of going away for a vacation-coming home again. -- Madeleine L'engle
If we don't pray according to the needs of the heart, we repress our deepest longings. Our prayers may not be rational, and we may be quite aware of that, but if we repress our needs, then those unsaid prayers will fester. -- Madeleine L'engle
But I did feel, and passionately, that it wasn't fair of God to give us brains enough to ask the ultimate questions if he didn't intend to teach us the answers. -- Madeleine L'engle
An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy. -- Madeleine L'engle
Of course. I am well aware that the streets of New York are not safe, but then there is no longer any place in the world which is safe. One cannot live in perpetual fear, one has to be as prudent as possible, and get on with life. - A Severed Wasp -- Madeleine L'engle
Jesus was not a theologian. He was God who told stories. -- Madeleine L'engle
God promised to make you free. He never promised to make you independent. -- Madeleine L'engle
Art is not a mirror but an icon. It takes the chaos in which we live and shows us structure and pattern, not the structure of conformity which imprisons but the structure which liberates,
sets us free to become growing, mature human beings. -- Madeleine L'engle
Maybe we have to sin, to know ourselves human, faulty and flawed, before there is any possibility of greatness." - Nik -- Madeleine L'engle
Artists ... all have a need that cannot be met by another human being. -- Madeleine L'engle
If it's not good enough for adults, it's not good enough for children. If a book that is going to be marketed for children does not interest me, a grownup, then I am dishonoring the children for whom the book is intended, and I am dishonoring books. And words. -- Madeleine L'engle
There is nothing that makes me happier than sitting around the dinner table and talking until the candles are burned down. -- Madeleine L'engle
There's nothing more physically exhausting than a sense of failure. -- Madeleine L'engle
I believe that consistently we need to look for good, and not for evil, that when we look for evil we call up evil, while heaven comes closer when we acknowledge it. -- Madeleine L'engle
And there's no getting around the fact that all life lives at the expense of another life. -- Madeleine L'engle
Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos, we see despite all the chaos. -- Madeleine L'engle
Aeschylus writes, In our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grade of God. -- Madeleine L'engle
I do not know everything; still many things I understand. -- Madeleine L'engle
You and I have good enough minds to know how very limited and finite they really are. The naked intellect is an extraordinarily inaccurate instrument. -- Madeleine L'engle
Their love was a bright flower, youthful and radiantly beautiful. -- Madeleine L'engle
Only Christ can free us from the prison of legalism, and then only if we are willing to be freed. -- Madeleine L'engle
A good laugh heals a lot of hurts. -- Madeleine L'engle
We cannot always cry at the right time
and who is to say which time is right? -- Madeleine L'engle
Thee onnlly wway ttoo ccope withh ssometthingg ddeadly sseriouss iss ttoo ttry ttoo trreatt itt a llittlle lligghtly. -- Madeleine L'engle
I get glimmers of the bad nineteenth-century teaching which has made Mother remove God from the realm of mystery and beauty and glory, but why do people half my age think that they don't have faith unless their faith is small and comprehensible and like a good old plastic Jesus? -- Madeleine L'engle
The shadows are deepening all around us. Now is the time when we must begin to see our world and ourselves in a different way. -- Madeleine L'engle
Mr Jenkins. Unique, as every star in the sky is unique, every leaf on every tree, every snowflake, every farandola, every cherubim, unique: Named. -- Madeleine L'engle
Darkness was and darkness was good. As with light. Light and Darkness dancing together, born together, born of each other, neither preceding, neither following, both fully being, in joyful rhythm. -- Madeleine L'engle
We have much to be judged on when he comes, slums and battlefields and insane asylums, but these are the symptoms of our illness and the result of our failures in love. -- Madeleine L'engle
I don't understand it any more than you do, but one thing I've learned is that you don't have to understand things for them to be. -- Madeleine L'engle
An old ass knows more than a young colt -- Madeleine L'engle
We look not at the things which are what you would call seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal. But the things that are not seen are eternal. -- Madeleine L'engle
Qui plussait, plus se tait. French, you know. The more a man knows, the less he talks. -- Madeleine L'engle
It's a lot simpler to adapt to low gravity, or no atmosphere, or even sandstorms than it is to hustle inhabitants. -- Madeleine L'engle
I feel as though I'm not breathing when I'm out of his presence. He's the oxygen in my air, the sun in my universe, the staff of my life.
- Jane Gardiner -- Madeleine L'engle
We turn to stories and pictures and music because they show us who and what and why we are. -- Madeleine L'engle
I love my mother, not as a prisoner of atherosclerosis, but as a person; and I must love her enough to accept her as she is, now, for as long as this dwindling may take. -- Madeleine L'engle
Poetry, at least the kind I write, is written out of immediate need; it is written out of pain, joy, and experience too great to be borne until it is ordered into words. And then it is written to be shared. -- Madeleine L'engle
I do hope I wasn't born in some dreadful mitochondrion which lives in some horrible isolated human host on a lonely planet like yours. -- Madeleine L'engle
The part of us that has to be burned away is something like the deadwood on the bush; it has to go, to be burned in the terrible fire of reality, until there is nothing left but ... what we are meant to be. -- Madeleine L'engle
But I am a storyteller, and that involves language, for me the English language, that wonderfully rich, complex, and ofttimes confusing tongue. When language is limited, I am thereby diminished, too. -- Madeleine L'engle
Our story is never written in isolation. We do not act in a one-man play. We can do nothing that does not affect other people, no matter how loudly we say, It's my own business. -- Madeleine L'engle
To share poetry is one of the most intimate acts of friendship possible ... -- Madeleine L'engle
How do I make more than a fumbling attempt to explain that faith is not legislated, that it is not a small box which works twenty-four hours a day? If I 'believe' for two minutes once every month or so, I'm doing well. -- Madeleine L'engle
If a book is not good enough for a grownup, it is not good enough for a child. -- Madeleine L'engle
The medieval mystics say the true image and the true real met once and for all on the cross: once and for all: and yet they still meet daily. -- Madeleine L'engle
And joy is always a promise. -- Madeleine L'engle
The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has obtained liberation from self. -- Madeleine L'engle
Speaking of ways, pet, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract. -- Madeleine L'engle
Questions are disturbing, especially those which may threaten our traditions, our institutions, our security. But questions never threaten the living God, who is constantly calling us, and who affirms for us that love is stronger than hate, blessings stronger than cursing. -- Madeleine L'engle
Artists of all disciplines must be willing to go into the dark, let go control, be surprised. -- Madeleine L'engle
Life is the greatest gift that could ever be conceived ... A daffodil pushing up through the dark earth to the spring, knowing somehow deep in its roots that spring and light and sunshine will come, has more courage and more knowledge of the value of life than any human being I've met. -- Madeleine L'engle
Come t'e' picciol fallo amaro morso! Dante. What grievous pain a little fault doth give thee! -- Madeleine L'engle
The deeper and richer a personality is, the more full it is of paradox and contradiction. It is only a shallow character who offers us no problems of contrast. -- Madeleine L'engle
People are more than just the way they look. -- Madeleine L'engle
O God,
here, as so often, I cannot help.
Let me not forget she is your child
and your concern makes mine as nothing. -- Madeleine L'engle
A lot of the shadow self is the home of poetry, story, prayer. My deepest understandings are often released from the part of me of which I am least aware most of the time. -- Madeleine L'engle
Silence fell between them, as tangible as the dark tree shadows that fell across their laps and that now seemed to rest upon them as heavily as though they possessed a measurable weight of their own. -- Madeleine L'engle
Maybe the job of the artist is to see through all of this strangeness to what really is, and that takes a lot of courage and a strong faith in the validity of the artistic vision even if there is not a conscious faith in God. -- Madeleine L'engle
To refuse to respond is in itself a response. -- Madeleine L'engle
My lovely shining fragile broken house is filled with flowers and founded on a rock. -- Madeleine L'engle
Nothing important is completely explicable. -- Madeleine L'engle
Inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it. -- Madeleine L'engle
It's a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand. -- Madeleine L'engle
I would, quite often, like to be grownup, wise, and sophisticated. But these gifts are not mine. -- Madeleine L'engle
With each book I write, I become more and more convinced that the books have a life of their own, quite apart from me. -- Madeleine L'engle
That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along. -- Madeleine L'engle
When I look at the galaxies on a clear night - when I look at the incredible brilliance of creation, and think that this is what God is like, then instead of feeling intimidated and diminished by it, I am enlarged ... I rejoice that I am a part of it. -- Madeleine L'engle
A book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate. -- Madeleine L'engle
They are very young. And on their earth, as they call it, they never communicate with other planets. They revolve about all alone in space."
"Oh," the thin beast said. "Aren't they lonely? -- Madeleine L'engle
Stories have a richness that goes way beyond fact. My writing knows more than I know. What a writer must do is listen to her book. It might take you where you don't expect to go. -- Madeleine L'engle
Why does anybody do anything?" Mimi asked impatiently. "Most of the time we don't know
any of us. -- Madeleine L'engle
Again Mrs Which's voice reverberated through the cave. "Therre willl nno llonggerr bee sso manyy pplleasanntt thinggss too llookk att iff rressponssible ppeoplle ddo nnott ddoo ssomethingg abboutt thee unnppleassanntt oness. -- Madeleine L'engle
I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright,
And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years,
Driven by the spheres,
Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world
And all her train were hurled. -- Madeleine L'engle
If I have something I want to say that is too difficult for adults to swallow, then I write it in a book for children. Children still haven't closed themselves off with fear of the unknown, fear of revolution, or the scramble for security. They are still familiar with the inborn vocabulary of myth -- Madeleine L'engle
Don't try to comprehend with your mind. Your minds are very limited. Use your intuition. -- Madeleine L'engle
One cannot be humble and aware of oneself at the same time. -- Madeleine L'engle
The written word Should be clean as bone, Clear as light, Firm as stone. Two words are not As good as one. I -- Madeleine L'engle
Man has a viewpoint, but God has the view. -- Madeleine L'engle
That's a sure way to tell about somebody
the way they play, or don't play, make-believe. -- Madeleine L'engle
We do live, all of us, on many different levels, and for most artists the world of imagination is more real than the world of the kitchen sink. -- Madeleine L'engle
The world has been abnormal for so long that we've forgotten what it's like to live in a peaceful and reasonable climate. If there is to be any peace or reason, we have to create it in our own hearts and homes. -- Madeleine L'engle
Some things have to be believed to be seen. -- Madeleine L'engle
It takes too much energy to be against something unless it's really important. -- Madeleine L'engle
The story comes, and it is pure story. That's all I set out to write. But I don't believe that we can write any kind of story without including, whether we intend to or not, our response to the world around us. -- Madeleine L'engle
If you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. -- Madeleine L'engle
The refusal to love is the only unbearable thing. -- Madeleine L'engle
Jesus was not a theologian. He was a God who told stories. -- Madeleine L'engle
When I am grappling with ideas which are radical enough to upset grown-ups, then I am likely to put these ideas into a story which will be marketed for children, because children understand what their parents have rejected and forgotten. -- Madeleine L'engle
All of life is a story -- Madeleine L'engle
She felt that she was being measured and found wanting. -- Madeleine L'engle
Are you fighting the Black Thing?" Meg asked. "Oh, yes," Aunt Beast replied. "In doing that, we can never relax. We are called according to His purpose, and whom He calls, them He also justifies. Of course we have help, and without help it would be much more difficult. -- Madeleine L'engle
Sorry. I get attacks of quotitis every once in a while. It's a very rare disease with no cure. It usually attacks older people, and here i am afflicted with it at my tender age. -- Madeleine L'engle
The Great God Science. It has failed us, because it was never meant to be a god, but only a few true scientists understand that. -- Madeleine L'engle
Truth is eternal. Knowledge is changeable. It is disastrous to confuse them. -- Madeleine L'engle
Papa's always had the ability to remember the good things and let the bad ones go."
"Not a bad ability."
" ... I'm not sure. I think we have to remember it all before we can forgive it. -- Madeleine L'engle
I have never lived before ... Until this summer, I did not know what it was to be alive. -- Madeleine L'engle
I knew that the moment I started worrying about whether or not I was good enough for the job, I wouldn't be able to do it. -- Madeleine L'engle
I do not believe that true optimism can come about except through tragedy. -- Madeleine L'engle
Deepest communion with God is beyond words, on the other side of silence. -- Madeleine L'engle
When a bride insists on telling her lover everything, I suspect she is looking for a father, not a husband. -- Madeleine L'engle
The prayer of words cannot be eliminated. And I must pray them daily, whether I feel like praying or not. Otherwise, when God as something to say to me, I will not know how to listen. Until I have worked through self, I will not be enabled to get out of the way. -- Madeleine L'engle
You cannot see the past that did not happen any more than you can foresee the future. -- Madeleine L'engle
If I didn't get fond I could be happy all the time. -- Madeleine L'engle
A Wrinkle in Time was almost never published. You can't name a major publisher who didn't reject it. -- Madeleine L'engle
That's quite something, to be loved by someone like Mrs Whatsit. -- Madeleine L'engle
I'm different,and I like being different."Calvin's voice was unnaturally loud.
"Maybe I don't like being different,"Meg said."but I don't want to be like everybody else,either. -- Madeleine L'engle
You've got to accept the fact that you are basically not teaching a subject, you are teaching children -- Madeleine L'engle
But I'm not patient!" cried Meg passionately. "I've never been patient! -- Madeleine L'engle
If you're too happy about anything, fate usually gives you a good sock in the jaw and knocks you down. -- Madeleine L'engle
Fewmets is my new swear word. I'm tired of all the old ones. -- Madeleine L'engle
The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain. -- Madeleine L'engle
And it came to me as I stood on the desert sand, looking at the Great Pyramid, that what any civilization says about God tells us more about that civilization than it does about God. -- Madeleine L'engle
We have to make decisions, and we can't make them if they're based on fear. -- Madeleine L'engle
Wild nights are my glory! -- Madeleine L'engle
It is the nature of love to create. It is the nature of hate to destroy. -- Madeleine L'engle
You're going to get hurt yourself, and badly, if you take everything so hard. -- Madeleine L'engle
We tend to defend vigorously things that in our deepest hearts we are not quite certain about. If we are certain of something we know, it doesn't need defending. -- Madeleine L'engle
Detachment and involvement: the artist must have both. The link between them is compassion. It has taken me over fifty years to get a glimmer of what this means. -- Madeleine L'engle
A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming. -- Madeleine L'engle
We do not know and cannot tell when the spirit is with us. Great talent or small, it makes no difference. We are caught within our own skins, our own sensibilities; we never know if our technique has been adequate to the vision. -- Madeleine L'engle
She always had to have someone to love ... She couldn't seem to believe that anyone could really love her. She always thought it was because she was a star, not just because of her herself, and she always had to be reassured. -- Madeleine L'engle
Charles Wallace understands more than the rest of us, doesn't he? -- Madeleine L'engle
I wrote because I wanted to know what everything was about. -- Madeleine L'engle
The uncommon man has done the impossible and there has been that much more light in the world because of it. Children respond to heroes by thinking creatively and sometimes in breaking beyond the bounds of the impossible in their turn, and so becoming heroes themselves. -- Madeleine L'engle
When a promise is broken, the promise still remains. In one way or another, we are all unfaithful to each other, and physical unfaithfulness is not the worst kind there is. -- Madeleine L'engle
Dare I? Of course I don't. But I'm going to anyhow because I have no choice. -- Madeleine L'engle
I hope that I will never forget the salvific power of joyful laughter. -- Madeleine L'engle
Inspiration more often comes during the work than before it, because the largest part of the job of an artist is to listen to the work. -- Madeleine L'engle
We do not have to understand in order to believe that behind the mystery and the fascination there is love. -- Madeleine L'engle
When I am constantly running there is no time for being. When there is no time for being there is no time for listening. -- Madeleine L'engle
Freedom is a terrible gift, and the theory behind all dictatorships is that "the people" do no want freedom. -- Madeleine L'engle
Picasso says that an artists paints not to ask a question but because he has found something and he wants to share - he cannot help it - what he has found. -- Madeleine L'engle
Beware of pride and arrogance, Charles, for they may betray you. -- Madeleine L'engle
We tend to think things are new because we just discovered them. -- Madeleine L'engle
Have you ever tried to get to your feet with a sprained dignity? -- Madeleine L'engle
Following Christ has nothing to do with success as the world sees success. It has to do with love. -- Madeleine L'engle
I think we're supposed to ask too much of each other; otherwise, nothing would ever get done. -- Madeleine L'engle
Active happiness is not a common state. Active unhappiness is better than dull days. Katherine was seldom in an intermediate stage. -- Madeleine L'engle
There will no longer be so many pleasant things to look at if responsible people do not do something about the unpleasant ones. -- Madeleine L'engle
The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been. -- Madeleine L'engle
We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts. -- Madeleine L'engle
We all tend to make zealous judgments and thereby close ourselves off from revelation. If we feel that we already know something in its totality, then we fail to keep our ears and eyes open to that which may expand or even changes that which we so zealously think we know. -- Madeleine L'engle
It's not my brain that's writing the book, it's these hands of mine. -- Madeleine L'engle
Like all great fantasists, he has taught me about life, life in eternity rather than chronology, life in that time in which we are real. -- Madeleine L'engle
In reading we must become creators. -- Madeleine L'engle
Women in Jesus' day were less than second-class citizens. -- Madeleine L'engle
She screamed out... and whether it was to help him or for him to help her, she did not know. -- Madeleine L'engle
The joys of love ... last only a moment. The sorrows of love last all the life long. -- Madeleine L'engle
To pray is to listen, to move through my own chattering to God, to that place where I can be silent and listen to what God may have to say. -- Madeleine L'engle
Almost all the joyful things of life are outside the measure of IQ tests. -- Madeleine L'engle
God is over all things, under all things; outside all; within, but not enclosed; without, but not excluded; above, but not raised up; below; but not depressed; wholly above, presiding; wholly without, embracing; wholly within, filling. -- Madeleine L'engle
Death is contagious; it is contracted the moment we are conceived. -- Madeleine L'engle
We want nothing from you that you do without grace or [ ... ] understanding. -- Madeleine L'engle
If someone knows who he is, really knows, then he doesn't need to hate. -- Madeleine L'engle
Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving. -- Madeleine L'engle
Do you know how lucky you are?" She smiled rather wryly. "Not most of the time. -- Madeleine L'engle
A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points. -- Madeleine L'engle
The name of God is so awe-full, so unpronounceable, that it has never been used by any of his creatures. Indeed, it is said that if, inadvertently, the great and terrible name of God should be spoken, the universe would explode. -- Madeleine L'engle
When have you been most you, the very most you? -- Madeleine L'engle
There is nothing we need be afraid to say before the Lord. -- Madeleine L'engle
I looked at this tiny, perfect creature and it was as though a light switch had been turned on. A great rush of love flooded out of me. -- Madeleine L'engle
We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it. -- Madeleine L'engle
We need the rock of the past under our feet in order to spring forward into the future. -- Madeleine L'engle
Okay, Polly," her grandfather said. "Let's have some normal, ordinary lesson time. What is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle? -- Madeleine L'engle
We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually. -- Madeleine L'engle
Being alive hurts. I have found it best not to rush for the aspirin bottle. - A Severed Wasp -- Madeleine L'engle
Das Werk lobt den Meister. (German: The work proves the craftsman.) -- Madeleine L'engle
Our country in general assumes that "the pursuit of happiness" really means "the pursuit of pleasure" and that therefore pleasure is the greatest good. -- Madeleine L'engle
Well, I think you're handsome, -- Madeleine L'engle
To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take. -- Madeleine L'engle
Story always tells us more than the mere words, and that is why we love to write it, and to read it. -- Madeleine L'engle
Basically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore 'religious. -- Madeleine L'engle
An artist is someone who cannot rest, who can never rest as long as there is one suffering creature in the world. -- Madeleine L'engle
When we believe in the impossible, it becomes possible, and we can do all kinds of extraordinary things. -- Madeleine L'engle
To be alive is to be vulnerable. -- Madeleine L'engle
There are still stars which move in ordered and beautiful rhythm. There are still people in this world who keep promises. -- Madeleine L'engle
The joy and love were so tangible that Meg felt that if she only knew where to reach she could touch it with her bare hands. -- Madeleine L'engle
In the day school she went to in New York she had long intimate conversations with them all in her imagination, but never in reality. -- Madeleine L'engle
But when the world is, indeed, in chaos, then an affirmation of cosmos becomes essential. -- Madeleine L'engle
I am also four, and twelve, and fifteen, and twenty-three, and thirty-one, and forty-five and ... and ... and ... -- Madeleine L'engle
Thinking I'm a moron gives people something to feel smug about," Charles Wallace said. "Why should I disillusion them? -- Madeleine L'engle
I hate it!" Charles Wallace cried passionately. "I hate the Dark Thing! -- Madeleine L'engle
Some of these questions don't have finite answers, but the questions themselves are important. Don't stop asking, and don't let anybody tell you the questions aren't worth it. They are. -- Madeleine L'engle
- What would I be singing, Vicky wondered, - if I sang out my moods? -- Madeleine L'engle
If you aren't unhappy sometimes you don't know how to be happy. -- Madeleine L'engle
The climax of their journey is a showdown with IT, the cold and calculating disembodied intelligence that has cast a black shadow over the universe in its quest to make everyone behave and believe the same. -- Madeleine L'engle
Poets are born knowing the language of angels. -- Madeleine L'engle
If we are not willing to fail we will never accomplish anything. All creative acts involve the risk of failure. -- Madeleine L'engle
If your name isn't known, then it's a very lonely feeling. -- Madeleine L'engle
We do learn and develop when we are exposed to those who are greater than we are. Perhaps this is the chief way we mature. -- Madeleine L'engle
When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability ... To be alive is to be vulnerable. -- Madeleine L'engle
Many waters cannot quench the thirst for love,nor can the floods drown it. -- Madeleine L'engle
In our dreams we are able to fly ... and that is a remembering of how we were meant to be. -- Madeleine L'engle
Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light. -- Madeleine L'engle
You learn to write by doing it. -- Madeleine L'engle
Like and equal are not the same thing at all. -- Madeleine L'engle
Vitam impendre vero. (To stake one's life for the truth.) -- Madeleine L'engle
We're all a grab bag of good and eveil, and by and large can't tell which is which -- Madeleine L'engle
Stories are like children. They grow in their own way. -- Madeleine L'engle
Give the public the 'image' of what it thinks it ought to be, or what television commercials or glossy magazine ads have convinced us we ought to be, and we will buy more of the product, become closer to the image, and further from reality. -- Madeleine L'engle
Love does not triumph easily or without pain, but story gives us the courage to endure the pain. -- Madeleine L'engle
It is the ability to choose which makes us human. -- Madeleine L'engle
What is self-image? Who started talking about one? I rather fancy it was Madison Avenue. -- Madeleine L'engle
There's nothing left except to try. -- Madeleine L'engle
We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are. -- Madeleine L'engle
What you think is not the point. What you do is what's going to count. -- Madeleine L'engle
When will you come
and how will you come
and will we be ready -- Madeleine L'engle
The best way to guide children without coercion is to be ourselves. -- Madeleine L'engle
It is possible to suffer and despair an entire lifetime and still not give up the art of laughter. -- Madeleine L'engle
Reading is a creative activity. You have to visualize the characters, you have to hear what the voices sound like. -- Madeleine L'engle
The growth of love is not a straight line, but a series of hills and valleys. -- Madeleine L'engle
Anything that's natural can't be sinful-it may be inconvenient, but it's not sinful. -- Madeleine L'engle
Don't keep putting your anger off. Until you go through it, you can't get out of it. -- Madeleine L'engle
Ananda: that joy without which the universe will fall apart and collapse. -- Madeleine L'engle
He's nothing but a deformed emanation of energy. -- Madeleine L'engle
It does not matter that we cannot fathom this mystery. The only real problem comes when we think that we have. -- Madeleine L'engle
Because you're not what I would have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth, you are. -- Madeleine L'engle
Wherever there's laughter, there is heaven. -- Madeleine L'engle
But she finds it so difficult to verbalize, Charles dear. It helps her if she can quote instead of working out words of her own. -- Madeleine L'engle
Wherever she was, holy laughter was present to heal and redeem. -- Madeleine L'engle
Sometimes when we have to speak suddenly we come closer to the truth than when we have time to think. -- Madeleine L'engle
A book comes and says, 'Write me. -- Madeleine L'engle
To be born is to start the journey towards death. -- Madeleine L'engle
We all tend to make zealous judgement, and thereby close ourselves off from revelation. -- Madeleine L'engle
People are afraid of knowledge that is not yet theirs. -- Madeleine L'engle
But where, after we have made the great decision to leave the security of childhood and move on into the vastness of maturity, does anybody ever feel completely at home? -- Madeleine L'engle
Friends do everything they can to protect each other.
Polly -- Madeleine L'engle
Inspiration does not always precede the act of writing; it often follows it. -- Madeleine L'engle
Only a fool is not afraid. -- Madeleine L'engle
Ridicule is a terrible witherer of the flower of the imagination. It binds us where we should be free. -- Madeleine L'engle
When we lose our myths we lose our place in the universe. -- Madeleine L'engle
If it can be verified, we don't need faith ... Faith is for that which lies on the other side of reason. Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys. -- Madeleine L'engle
Experiment is the mother of knowledge. -- Madeleine L'engle
You don't want him for a reason. You want him because he's your father. -- Madeleine L'engle
She began to feel the sense of wonderful elation that always came to her when beauty took hold of her and made her forget her fears. -- Madeleine L'engle
A life form which can't adapt doesn't last very long. -- Madeleine L'engle
You cannot take credit for your talents. It is what you do with them that counts. -- Madeleine L'engle
It was not an end, it was a beginging -- Madeleine L'engle
I would venture a guess that an artist concentrating wholly unself-consciously, wholly thrown into his work, is incapable of producing pornography. -- Madeleine L'engle
Be aware that rigidity imprisons. -- Madeleine L'engle
As human beings, the closest we can get to truth is through story. -- Madeleine L'engle
But if I knew everything, there would be no wonder, because what I believe in is far more than I know. -- Madeleine L'engle
It was the same way with silence. This was more than silence. A deaf person can feel vibrations. Here there was nothing to feel. -- Madeleine L'engle
There's nothing the matter with his mind. He just does things in his own way and in his own time. -- Madeleine L'engle
What happens to what's happened? -- Madeleine L'engle
God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. -- Madeleine L'engle
Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind. -- Madeleine L'engle
I'm apt to get drunk on words ... Ontology: the word about the essence of things; the word about being. -- Madeleine L'engle
I have a point of view. You have a point of view. God has view. -- Madeleine L'engle