Quotes from Madeleine L'Engle

I felt so insufferably alone. I remembered Miss Myra Turnbull telling us once that this desperate need we have to belong to someone goes back to our earliest forebears, the lowest form of animal life, the amoeba, each individual particle of which has to be joined to other particles to make a whole. Then

The story comes, and it is pure story. That's all I set out to write. But I don't believe that we can write any kind of story without including, whether we intend to or not, our response to the world around us.

Don't be afraid to be afraid.

And perhaps if we ever have real equality with all our glorious differences, the language itself will make the appropriate changes. For language, like a story or a painting, is alive. Ultimately it will be the artists who will change the language (as Chaucer did, as Dante did, as Joyce did), not the committees.

Oh, my darling you are not dumb, her father answered. You're like Charles Wallace. Your development has to go at its own pace. It just doesn't happen to be the usual pace.

The writer does want to be published; the painter urgently hopes that someone will see the finished canvas (van Gogh was denied the satisfaction of having his work bought and appreciated during his lifetime; no wonder the pain was more than he could bear); the composer needs his music to be heard. Art is communication, and if there is no communication it is as though the work has been stillborn.

You matter. You are. Be.

In a world where pleasure rules, people tend to be underdeveloped in every other way.

When will you come and how will you come and will we be ready

My daughter, I am not a Mrs Whatsit, a Mrs Who, or a Mrs Which. Yes, Calvin has told me everything he could. I am a human being, and a very fallible one. But I agree with Calvin. We were sent here for something. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

The stones do not tell us what is going to happen, or what we are to do, any more than the stars. They speak to us only of our present position in the great pattern. Where we are now; here. Sometimes that helps us to see the pattern more clearly. That is all.

No, it was not anger, it was loathing; it was hatred, sheer and unadulterated, and as she became lost in hatred she also began to be lost in IT.

You might call IT the Boss." Then Charles Wallace giggled, a giggle that was the most sinister sound Meg had ever heard. "IT sometimes calls ITself the Happiest Sadist.

The stars do not foretell, because what has not happened must be free to happen, as it will.

Maybe if you aren't unhappy sometimes you don't know how to be happy.

And I was, as clearly as I can express something that is really unexpressible, out on the other side of fear.

Like everything else - Meg spoke to the few remaining cauliflower heads - it's falling apart. It's not right in the United States of America that a little kid shouldn't be safe in school.

She screamed out... and whether it was to help him or for him to help her, she did not know.

and it's a little planet, dears, out on the edge of a little galaxy. You can be proud that it's done so well.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

she stopped herself from being hurt long, long ago by not letting herself love anybody or anything.

Many waters cannot quench love,' she whispered. 'Neither can floods drown it.

Hate is like cancer, separate from the normal cells, devouring and not being nourished, annihilating itself along with everything it attacks.

God doesn't stop the bad things from happening; that's never been part of the promise. The promise is: I am with you. I am with you now until the end of time.