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'EngleWe turn to stories and pictures and music because they show us who and what and why we are.
Madeleine L'EngleNothing, no one, is too small to matter. What you do is going to make a difference.
Madeleine L'EngleLove 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'EngleA long-term marriage has to move beyond chemistry to compatibility, to friendship, to companionship. It is certainly not that passion disappears, but that it is conjoined with other ways of love.
Madeleine L'EngleWe do not have to understand in order to believe that behind the mystery and the fascination there is love.
Madeleine L'EngleIf 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'EngleWe 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'EngleLife 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'EngleWe 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'EngleThe 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'EngleGod 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'EngleIf we commit ourselves to one person for life, this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation.
Madeleine L'EngleThe great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.
Madeleine L'EngleI don't know if they're really like everybody else, or if they're able to pretend they are.
Madeleine L'EngleWhen 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'EngleThat's a sure way to tell about somebody--the way they play, or don't play, make-believe.
Madeleine L'EngleQui plussait, plus se tait. French, you know. The more a man knows, the less he talks.
Madeleine L'EngleIf 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'EngleThe beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living. What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder.
Madeleine L'EngleIf you want to write, you need to 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'EngleI will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.
Madeleine L'EngleBasically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore 'religious.
Madeleine L'EngleAn infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy... If I try self-consciously to become a person, I will never be one. The most real people, those who are able to forget their selfish selves, who have true compassion, are usually the most distinct individuals
Madeleine L'EngleI am also four, and twelve, and fifteen, and twenty-three, and thirty-one, and forty-five and . . . and . . . and . . .
Madeleine L'EngleI 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'EngleThere is little character or loveliness in the face of someone who has shunned risk, avoided suffering and rejected life
Madeleine L'EngleI have never lived before...Until this summer, I did not know what it was to be alive.
Madeleine L'EngleBut grief still has to be worked through. It is like walking through water. Sometimes there are little waves lapping about my feet. Sometimes there is an enormous breaker that knocks me down. Sometimes there is a sudden and fierce squall. But I know that many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.
Madeleine L'EngleA 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