Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

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.

Itt iss Eevill…" "What is going to happen?" "Wee wwill cconnttinnue tto ffightt!"… "And we’re not alone, you know, children," came Mrs.Whatsit, the comforter. "…some of the best fighters have come from your own planet…" "Who have our fighters been?" Calvin asked. "Oh, you must know them, dear," Mrs.Whatsit said. Mrs.Who’s spectacles shone out at them triumphantly. "And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

We know you have a great mind and all, Mother, but you don’t have much sense.

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?

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.

If you're too happy about anything, fate usually gives you a good sock in the jaw and knocks you down.

If you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you.

You don't want him for a reason. You want him because he's your father.

Hate hurts the hater more'n the hated.

Don't keep putting your anger off. Until you go through it, you can't get out of it.

It is an extraordinary and beautiful thing that God, in creation. . . works with the beauty of matter; the reality of things; the discoveries of the senses, all five of them; so that we, in turn, may hear the grass growing; see a face springing to life in love and laughter. . . The offerings of creation. . . our glimpses of truth.

You see, though we travel together, we travel alone.

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.

When the bright angel dominates, out comes a great work of art, a Michelangelo David or a Beethoven symphony.

There are times when I feel that he has withdrawn from me, and I have often given him cause, but Easter is always the answer to My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!

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.

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.

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.

Easter is always the answer to "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!"

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.

It's not my brain that's writing the book, it's these hands of mine.

... nothing loved is ever lost or perished.

Yes! I dare disturb the universe.

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.

It's a strange thing, how you can love somebody, how you can be all eaten up inside with needing them--and they simply don't need you. That's all there is to it, and neither of you can do anything about it. And they'll be the same way with someone else, and someone else will be the same way about you and it goes on and on--this desperate need--and only once in a rare million do the same two people need each other.