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.”

“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”

“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.”

“But my memories are like a fire in winter—whenever I'm cold I can warm my hands at them. —Ditta”

“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?”

“We hear a lot about evangelism today and how the church must pay more attention to evangelism. But mostly evangelism is not what we tell people, unless what we tell is totally consistent with who we are. It is who we are that is going to make the difference. It is who we are that is going to show th...”

“I have advice for people who want to write. I don't care whether they're 5 or 500. There are three things that are important: First, if 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...”

“Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.”

“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. Arou...”

“We human creatures can make watches and clocks and sensitive timing devices, but we don’t understand what we’re timing.”

“A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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”

“In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there's no...”

“A great ring of pure & endless light Dazzles the darkness in my heart And breaks apart the dusky clouds of night. The end of all is hinted in the start. When we are born we bear the seeds of blight; Around us life & death are torn apart, Yet a great ring of pure and endless light Dazzles the darknes...”

“I do not know everything; still many things I understand.”

“The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.”

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

“Qui plussait, plus se tait. French, you know. The more a man knows, the less he talks.”

“When I start a new seminar I tell my students that I will undoubtedly contradict myself, and that I will mean both things. But an acceptance of contradiction is no excuse for fuzzy thinking. We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledge that they cannot take us all the way...”

“Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.”

“Reading about the response of people in stories, plays, poems, helps us to respond more courageously and openly at our own moments of turning.”

“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.”

“I’ve made myself vulnerable I’ve let myself care. I’ve opened my firmly closed heart. My safety is gone It’s no longer there My protection is falling apart. Nobody promised Our hearts would be safe Or our bodies protected from harm. A moment can change All we think that we have, Hope will endure thr...”

“We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“How long your closet held a whiff of you, Long after hangers hung austere and bare. I would walk in and suddenly the true Sharp sweet sweat scent controlled the air And life was in that small still living breath. Where are you? since so much of you is here, Your unique odour quite ignoring death. My...”

“Death is contagious; it is contracted the moment we are conceived.”

“Some things have to be believed to be seen.”

“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.”

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

“A book comes and says, 'Write me.”

“Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.”

“Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling.”

“I 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...”