Quotes from Madeleine L'Engle

We do not know what things look like, as you say," the beast said. "We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing, this seeing.

There are forces working in the world as never before in the history of mankind for standardization, for the regimentation of us all, or what I like to call making muffins of us, muffins all like every other muffin in the muffin tin. This is the limited universe, the drying, dissipating universe, that we can help our children avoid by providing them with "explosive material capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly.

Do you know how lucky you are?" She smiled rather wryly. "Not most of the time.

If we knew each morning that there was going to be another morning, and on and on and on, we'd tend not to notice the sunrise,or hear the birds, or the waves rolling into shore. We'd tend not to treasure our time with the people we love.

The more a man knows, the less he talks.

What happens to what's happened?

The refusal to love is the only unbearable thing.

Now the red eyes and the light above seemed to bore into Charles, and again the pupils fo the little boy's eyes contracted. When the final point of black was lost in blue he turned away from the red eyes, looked at Meg, and smiled sweetly, but the smile was not Charles Wallaces smile.

But I love her. That's the funny part of it. I love them all, and they don't give a hoot about me. Maybe that's why I call when I'm not going to be home. Because I care. Nobody else does. You don't know how lucky you are to be loved.

to look at a work of art and then to make a judgement as to whether or not it is art, and whether or not it is Christian, is presumptuous.

And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

I like to understand things," Meg said. "We all do. But it isn't always possible.

In the act of creativity, the artist lets go the self-control which he normally clings to and is open to riding the wind.

Love does not triumph easily or without pain, but story gives us the courage to endure the pain.

You're much too straightforward to be able to pretend to be what you aren't," Mrs. Murry said.

The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has obtained liberation from self.

I heard a doctor say that the living tend to withdraw emotionally from the dying, thereby driving them deeper into isolation. Not to withdraw takes tremendous strength. To pull back is a temptation; it doesn't hurt nearly as much as remaining open.

If I never had another book published, and it was very clear to me that this was a real possibility, I still had to go on writing. I'm glad I made this decision in a moment of failure. It's easy to say you're a writer when things are going well. When the decision is made in the abyss, the in is quite clear that it is not one's own decision at all.

Somehow or other, the loving parents had swallowed one of the Tempter's hooks, and the child was given total self-indulgence, which is far from free will. He still tempts. The ancient, primordial battle to destroy Community, to shatter Trinity, still continues. Creation still groans with the pain of it. Like it or not, we're caught in the middle.

Stories, no matter how simple, can be vehicles of truth; can be, in fact, icons. It's no coincidence that Jesus taught almost entirely by telling stories, simple stories dealing with the stuff of life familiar to the Jews of his day. Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos we see despite all the chaos.

Lords of blue and Lords of gold, Lords of wind and waters wild, Lords of time that's growing old, When will come the season mild? When will come blue Madoc's child?

It is the pattern throughout Creation. One child, one man, can swing the balance of the universe.

If the artist reflects only his own culture, then his works will die with that culture. But if his works reflect the eternal and universal, they will revive.

There's no such thing as an unbreakable scientific rule, because, sooner or later, they all seem to get broken. Or to change.