Quotes from Madeleine L'Engle

The compulsion for me to get my cotton-pickin' fingers on my fellow man is the natural result of my belief that I have the word. If I do have the word and feel surrounded by unmolded clay, I have no choice but to mold. When I do this, I begin playing God, and as a result usually raise the devil.

The purpose of the story or music or painting, is to further the coming of the kingdom, to make us aware of our status as children of God, and to turn our feet towards home.

Mercy. It didn't mean that everything was okay, could or should be condoned. But we can't move out of ourselves and our own self-justifications until we look in the mirror and know, yes, I, too, could have done this. Or worse. My anger at my mother. At Mama for telling me things I don't want to know.

It seemed strange that with so much softness in her actual construction Mamma gave such a feeling of hardness. When

One cannot live in perpetual fear. One has to be as prudent as possible, and get on with life. Don't worry about me.

Que la terre est petite à qui la voit des cieux! Delille.

God doesn't plan the horrors. They happen. But God can come into them.

Mrs Whatsit shook her beautiful head.

And When is not what matters. It's what happens in the When that matters. Are you ready to go?

the joy and love were so tangible

believe God can come into the terrible things and redeem them.

What we must look for is God's mercy. God's mercy shown through our own.

When we can play with the unself-conscious concentration of a child, this is: art: prayer: love.

You know when you cut yourself really badly, it doesn't hurt for a while. You don't feel anything. Death- our reaction to death- is sort of like that. You don't feel anything at all. And then, later on, you begin to hurt.

It's not the first incomprehensible thing that's happened in our lifetime," his wife reminded him.

I wanted you to do it all for me. I wanted everything to be all easy and simple.... So I tried to pretend that it was all your fault... because I was scared, and I didn't want to have to do anything myself— But I wanted to do it for you, Mr. Murry said. That's what every parent wants.

think your mother-in-law understands particulars. She's not a do-gooder, because most do-gooders deal in generalities. She never loses sight of the particular person, the unique human need.

Only a human being can say I'm sorry. Forgive me. This is part of our particularity. It is part of what makes us capable of tears, capable of laughter.

They can't understand plain, ordinary love when they see it.

Oh, girl, not woman, more than child, Which of us two is the more wild? So

Ptolemy said, "Mortal though I be, yea, ephemeral, if but a moment I gaze up at night's starry domain of heaven, then no longer on earth I stand: I touch the Creator and my lively spirit drinketh immortality.

The language of logical argument, of proofs,is the language of the limited self we know and can manipulate. But the language of parable and poetry, of storytelling,moves from the imprisoned language of the provable into the free language of what I must, for lack of another word, continue to call faith.

There will no longer be so many pleasant things to look at if responsible people do not do something about the unpleasant ones

You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it?" "Yes." Mrs. Whatsit said. "You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.