Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

A burst of harmony so brilliant that it almost overwhelmed them surrounded Meg, the cherubim, Calvin, and Mr. Jenkins. But after a moment of breathlessness, Meg was able to open herself to the song of the farae, these strange creatures who were Deepened, rooted, yet never seperated from each other, no matter how great the distance. We are the song of the universe. We sing with the angelic host. We are musicians. The farae and the stars are the singers. Our song orders the rhythm of creation.

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.

Everything we do, our entire interior monologue, is prayer.

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.

I wrote because I wanted to know what everything was about.

An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy.

There is in God, some say, a deep but dazzling darkness.

But there is something about Time. The sun rises and sets. The stars swing slowly across the sky and fade. Clouds fill with rain and snow, empty themselves, and fill again. The moon is born, and dies, and is reborn. Around millions of clocks swing hour hands, and minute hands, and second hands. Around goes the continual circle of the notes of the scale. Around goes the circle of night and day, the circle of weeks forever revolving, and of months, and of years.

Man has a viewpoint, but God has the view.

That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along.

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?

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.

Nothing important is completely explicable.

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.

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

If we all knew each morning that there was going to be another morning, and on and on and on, we's tend not to notice the sunrise, or hear the birds, or the waves rolling into the shore. We'd tend not to treasure our time with the people we love. Simply the awareness that our mortal lives had a beginning and will have an end enhances the quality of our living. Perhaps it's even more intense when we know that the termination of the body is near, but it shouldn't be.

If I didn't get fond I could be happy all the time.

A good laugh heals a lot of hurts.

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.

To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take.

And there's no getting around the fact that all life lives at the expense of another life.

if a book is not good enough for a grownup, it is not good enough for a child.

Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else.

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.

You don’t know the meaning of moderation, do you, my darling? A happy medium is something I wonder if you’ll ever learn.

To be alive is to be vulnerable.

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.

The growth of love is not a straight line, but a series of hills and valleys.

Have you ever tried to get to your feet with a sprained dignity?

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

We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledging that they cannot take us all the way.

We are suspicious of grace. We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift.

As far as I'm concerned, there is only one absolute: God is love.

Conversion for me was not a Damascus Road experience. I slowly moved into an intellectual acceptance of what my intuition had always known.

If we are not willing to fail we will never accomplish anything. All creative acts involve the risk of failure.

'A Wrinkle in Time' was almost never published. You can't name a major publisher who didn't reject it.

Friends do everything they can to protect each other." --Polly

Time exists so that everything doesn't happen at once.

Be aware that rigidity imprisons.

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.

I wish that we worried more about asking the right questions instead of being so hung up on finding answers.

Language changes. If it does not change, like Latin it dies. But we need to be aware that as our language changes, so does our theology change, particularly if we are trying to manipulate language for a specific purpose. That is what is happening with our attempts at inclusive language, which thus far have been inconclusive and unsuccessful.

What is self-image? Who started talking about one? I rather fancy it was Madison Avenue.

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.

Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind.

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.

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.

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.