Madeleine L'Engle Quotes
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What can we give a child when there is nothing left? All we have, I think, is the truth, the truth that will set him free, not limited, provable truth, but the open, growing, evolving truth that is not afraid.
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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.
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Poetry, at least the kind I write, is written out of immediate need; it is written out of pain, joy, and experience too great to be borne until it is ordered into words. And then it is written to be shared.
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Maybe you have to know darkness before you can appreciate the light.
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How do we teach a child - our own, or those in a classroom - to have compassion: to allow people to be different; to understand that like is not equal; to experiment; to laugh; to love; to accept the fact that the most important questions a human being can ask do not have - or need - answers.
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When the bright angel dominates, out comes a great work of art, a Michelangelo David or a Beethoven symphony.
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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.
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Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing had vanished, and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure.
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As the skipping rope hit the pavement, so did the ball. As the rope curved over the head of the jumping child, the child with the ball caught the ball. Down came the ropes. Down came the balls. Over and over again. Up. Down. All in rhythm. All identical. Like the houses. Like the paths. Like the flowers
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I sometimes think God is a s-t - and he wouldn't be worth it otherwise. He's much more interesting when he's a s-t.
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There's more to life than just the things that can be explained by encyclopedias and facts. Facts alone are not adequate.
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The rational intellect doesn't have a great deal to do with love, and it doesn't have a great deal to do with art. I am often, in my writing, great leaps ahead of where I am in my thinking, and my thinking has to work its way slowly up to what the 'superconscious' has already shown me in a story or poem.
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Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.
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In the evening of life we shall be judged on love, and not one of us is going to come off very well, and were it not for my absolute faith in the loving forgiveness of my Lord I could not call on him to come.
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I wrote because I wanted to know what everything was about. My father, before I was born, had been gassed in the first World War, and I wanted to know why there were wars, why people hurt each other, why we couldn't get along together, and what made people tick. That's why I started to write stories.
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Kids don't hesitate to ask questions. And it's a great honor to have the kids say, 'Your books have made me trust you.'
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Suddenly she knew. She knew! Love. That was what she had that IT did not have. She had Mrs. Whatsit's love, and her father's, and mother's, and the real Charles Wallace's love, and the twins', and Aunt Beast's. And she had her love for them. But how could she use it? What was she meant to do?
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Alike and Equal are not the same.
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A book, too, can be a star, 'explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,' a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.
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Love can't be pinned down by a definition, and it certainly can't be proved, anymore than anything else important in life can be proved.
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It has often struck me with awe that some of the most deeply religious people I know have been, on the surface, atheists.
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A great piece of literature does not try to coerce you to believe it or agree with it. A great piece of literature simply is. It is a vehicle of truth, but it is not a blueprint, and we tend to confuse the two.
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That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along.
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When we are self-conscious, we cannot be wholly aware; we must throw ourselves out first. This throwing ourselves away is the act of creativity. So, when we wholly concentrate, like a child in play, or an artist at work, then we share in the act of creating. We not only escape time, we escape our self-conscious selves.