Quotes from Madeleine L'Engle

But human beings need Deepening Places, too. And far too many never have any.

Finally I scrawled at the bottom of the epistle that I truly feared for this woman. We find what we are looking for. If we are looking for life and love and openness and growth, we are likely to find them. If we are looking for witchcraft and evil, we'll likely find them, and we may get taken over by them.

Matt, I saw a man with his face blown off and no mouth to scream with, and yet he screamed and could not die. I saw two brothers, and one was in blue and one was in grey, and I will not tell you which one took his saber and ran it through the other. Oh God, it was brother against brother, Cain and Abel all over again. And I was turned into Cain. What would God have to do with a nation where brothers can turn against each other with such brutality?

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability.

But I wanted to do it for you," Mr. Murry said. "That's what every parent wants.

Stars, galaxies, circled in cosmic pattern, and the joy of unity was greater than any disorder within.

I love anything that is going to make language richer and stronger. But when words are used in a way that is going to weaken language, it has nothing to do with the beautiful way that they can wriggle and wiggle and develop and enrich our speech, but instead it is impoverishing, diminishing. If our language is watered down, then mankind becomes less human, and less free—though we may buy more of the product.

If you have some liniment I'll put it on my dignity

Nosotros no prestamos atención a las cosas a las que ustedes llaman visibles, si no a las que no se ven. Puesto que las cosas que se ven son temporales. Pero las que no se ven, son eternas.

The Greeks had a word for ultimate self-consciousness which I find illuminating: hubris: pride: pride in the sense of putting oneself in the center of the universe. The strange and terrible thing is that this kind of total self-consciousness invariably ends in self-annihilation. The great tragedians have always understood this, from Sophocles to Shakespeare. We witness it in history in such people as Tiberius, Eva Perón, Hider. I

A journal is not a diary, where you record the weather and the engagements of the day. A journal is a notebook in which one can, hopefully, be ontological.

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Remember, Mr. Jenkins, you're great on Benjamin Franklin's saying, 'We must all hang together, or assuredly we will all hang separately

That's it, isn't it?" Mimi asked. "Someone to talk with. Someone who can talk about the things in our own concerns.

Let us not try to understand the pattern, only rejoice in its beauty.

Don't try to make comparisons. By whose standards do we compare?

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' For our sakes Jesus went through all the suffering we may ever have to endure, and because he cried out those words we may cry them out, too.

When Zachary saw Annie, he entered the circles of overlapping time. Behold, I have set before you an open door, and no man can shut it.

Hate hurts the hater more'n the hated.

It's better to take it out on God. He can cope with all our angers. That's one thing my long span of chronology has taught me. If I take all my anger, if I take all my bitterness over the unfairness of this mortal life, and throw it all to God, he can take it all and transform it into love before he gives it back to me.

God go with you." "I don't believe in God." "That's all right. I do." "I'm glad.

In this way I have sat in many rooms and walked in many gardens, and it has been as though I were a stick of furniture or a branch of a tree. I seem to have caused no sense of restraint or embarrassment. People have been able to talk freely in front of me, almost as freely as though I weren't there. I suppose some might think this a great compliment; it has given me a curious feeling of nonexistence. Now

one thing I've learned is that you don't have to understand things for them to be.

After Justin's death she had had it cut short, and felt that it was more becoming than the heavy masses of long hair he had loved, and which took forever to dry and dress. The short, well-styled hair toweled dry in a few minutes, and fell in becoming waves over her high forehead, her small delicate ears, showing the graceful curve of her neck.