Madeleine L'Engle Quotes
prayer is whenever we consciously try to get in contact with the numinous, the ineffable, the marvelous.
The medieval mystics say the true image and the true real met once and for all on the cross: once and for all: and yet they still meet daily.
To grow up is to find the small part you are playing in the extraordinary drama written by somebody else.
With each book I write, I become more and more convinced that the books have a life of their own, quite apart from me.
The deeper and richer a personality is, the more full it is of paradox and contradiction. It is only a shallow character who offers us no problems of contrast.
I feel as though I'm not breathing when I'm out of his presence. He's the oxygen in my air, the sun in my universe, the staff of my life. —Jane Gardiner
the discoveries don't come when you're looking for them. They come when for some reason you've let go conscious control.
Schooling, instead of encouraging the asking of questions, too often discourages it.
Artists of all disciplines must be willing to go into the dark, let go control, be surprised.
Creative scientists and saints expect revelation and do not fear it. Neither do children. But as we grow up and we are hurt, we learned not to trust.
The joys of love...last only a moment. The sorrows of love last all the life long.
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.
We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledging that they cannot take us all the way.
I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, "Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me."
No matter how true I believe what I am writing to be, if the reader cannot also participate in that truth, then I have failed.
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.
We turn to stories and pictures and music because they show us who and what and why we are.
I knew that the moment I started worrying about whether or not I was good enough for the job, I wouldn't be able to do it.
I have never lived before...Until this summer, I did not know what it was to be alive.
If you're too happy about anything, fate usually gives you a good sock in the jaw and knocks you down.
If she could give love to IT perhaps it would shrivel up and die, for she was sure that IT could not withstand love.
I looked at this tiny, perfect creature and it was as though a light switch had been turned on. A great rush of love flooded out of me.
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?
A community to be truly community, must have a quality of unselfconsciousness about it.
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.
A 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.
What is self-image? Who started talking about one? I rather fancy it was Madison Avenue.
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.
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.
You don’t know the meaning of moderation, do you, my darling? A happy medium is something I wonder if you’ll ever learn.
Love can't be pinned down by a definition, and it certainly can't be proved, any more than anything else important in life can be proved.
