Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

It might be a good idea if, like the White Queen, we practiced believing six impossible things every morning before breakfast, for we are called on to believe what to many people is impossible. Instead of rejoicing in this glorious "impossible" which gives meaning and dignity to our lives, we try to domesticate God, to make his might actions comprehensible to our finite minds.

There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation.

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.

It takes too much energy to be against something unless it's really important.

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.

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

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.

Believing takes practice.

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.

God promised to make you free. He never promised to make you independent.

The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.

If our language is watered down, then mankind becomes less human, and less free.

Oh child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the affect of extreme complication. -Aunt Beast

Euripedes. Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything.

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.

And I can't say it now. I can't say what I want to say. I hold you-- I-- I clutch you, because I love you so desperately, and time is so short, we have such a little time in which to live and be young, even at best, and I put my arms around you and hold you because I want to love you while I can and I want to know I'm loving you, only it doesn't mean anything because you aren't afraid. You aren't frightened so that you want to clutch it all while you can.

Integrity, like humility, is a quality which vanishes the moment we are conscious of it in ourselves. We see it only in others.

It was a dark and stormy night.

Are anybody's parents typical?

artists ... all have a need that cannot be met by another human being.

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.

Speaking of ways, pet, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract.

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.

Schooling, instead of encouraging the asking of questions, too often discourages it.

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.

Reading is a creative activity. You have to visualize the characters, you have to hear what the voices sound like.

Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.

Thinking I'm a moron gives people something to feel smug about," Charles Wallace said. "Why should I disillusion them?

We have not wondered enough at the delights God has given us to appreciate them, and be good stewards. We have overworked the land, poured pollutants into river and stream, fouled the air we breathe with gas fumes and chemical smoke spiraling up from industrial chimneys. We have sown the wind. We are reaping the whirlwind.

You cannot see the past that did not happen any more than you can foresee the future.

As human beings, the closest we can get to truth is through story.

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."

If you aren't unhappy sometimes you don't know how to be happy.

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.

A new year can begin only because the old year ends.

But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career.

When I am constantly running there is no time for being. When there is no time for being there is no time for listening.

For the things that are seen are temporal, but things that are unseen are eternal.

Inspiration does not always precede the act of writing; it often follows it.

We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.

Anger is not bitterness. Bitterness can go on eating at a man's heart and mind forever. Anger spends itself in its own time.

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.

Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.

I have a point of view. You have a point of view. God has view.

When we can play with the unself-conscious concentration of a child, this is: art: prayer: love.

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.

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.

what I must learn is to love with all of me, giving all of me, and yet remain whole in myself. Any other kind of love is too demanding of the other; it takes, rather than gives. To love so completely that you lose yourself in another person is not good. You are giving a weight, not the sense of lightness and light that loving someone should give.