Quotes from Madeleine L'Engle

Stories are like children. They grow in their own way.

Calvin said, Do you know that this is the first time I've seen you without your glasses? I'm blind as a bat without them. I'm near-sighted, like father. Well, you know what, you've got dream-boat eyes, Calvin said. Listen, you go right on wearing your glasses. I don't think I want anybody else to see what gorgeous eyes you have.

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.

We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.

I do not think that I will ever reach a stage when I will say, This is what I believe. Finished. What I believe is alive ... and open to growth

It seemed to travel with her, to sweep her aloft in the power of song, so that she was moving in glory among the stars, and for a moment she, too, felt that the words Darkness and Light had no meaning, and only this melody was real.

Have you ever tried to get to your feet with a sprained dignity?

We turn to stories and pictures and music because they show us who and what and why we are.

A good laugh heals a lot of hurts.

Maybe that's the best part of going away for a vacation-coming home again.

We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually.

It takes too much energy to be against something unless it's really important.

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.

We do learn and develop when we are exposed to those who are greater than we are. Perhaps this is the chief way we mature.

But there is something about Time. The sun rises and sets. The stars swing slowly across the sky and fade. Clouds fill with rain and snow, empty themselves, and fill again. The moon is born, and dies, and is reborn. Around millions of clocks swing hour hands, and minute hands, and second hands. Around goes the continual circle of the notes of the scale. Around goes the circle of night and day, the circle of weeks forever revolving, and of months, and of years.

It was a dark and stormy night.

Meg, don't you think you'd make a better adjustment to life if you faced facts? I do face facts, Meg said. They're lots easier to face than people, I can tell you.

An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy.

I saw Eternity the other night, Like a great ring of pure and endless light, All calm, as it was bright, And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years, Driven by the spheres, Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world And all her train were hurled.

It is possible to suffer and despair an entire lifetime and still not give up the art of laughter.

When I have something to say that I think will be too difficult for adults, I write it in a book for children. Children are excited by new ideas; they have not yet closed the doors and windows of their imaginations. Provided the story is good... nothing is too difficult for children.

In reading we must become creators.

Love. That was what she had that IT did not have.

She seems to have had the ability to stand firmly on the rock of her past while living completely and unregretfully in the present.