Quotes from Madeleine L'Engle

People are afraid of knowledge that is not yet theirs.

Creativity comes from accepting that you're not safe, from being absolutely aware, and from letting go of control. It's a matter of seeing everything - even when you want to shut your eyes.

Conversion for me was not a Damascus Road experience. I slowly moved into an intellectual acceptance of what my intuition had always known.

Picasso says that an artists paints not to ask a question but because he has found something and he wants to share—he cannot help it—what he has found.

A great painting or symphony or play, doesn't diminish us, but enlarges us, and we, too, want to make our own cry of affirmation to the power of Creation behind the Universe.

Why does anybody do anything?" Mimi asked impatiently. "Most of the time we don't know--any of us.

Because you're not what I would have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth, you are.

To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take.

Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature.

A long-term marriage has to move beyond chemistry to compatibility, to friendship, to companionship. It is certainly not that passion disappears, but that it is conjoined with other ways of love.

Sometimes idiosyncrasies which used to be irritating become endearing, part of the complexity of a partner who has become woven deep into our own selves.

No long-term marriage is made easily, and there have been times when I've been so angry or so hurt that I thought my love would never recover.

Our story is never written in isolation. We do not act in a one-man play. We can do nothing that does not affect other people, no matter how loudly we say, "It's my own business.

Man is; it matters to him; this is terrifying unless it matters to God, too, because this is the only possible reason we can matter to ourselves.

Man has a viewpoint, but God has the view.

Women must be very gentle with men as they, as well as women, seek to regain the lost wholeness for which they were destined.

I like the fact that in ancient Chinese art the great painters always included a deliberate flaw in their work: human creation is never perfect.

When the bright angel dominates, out comes a great work of art, a Michelangelo David or a Beethoven symphony.

Don't keep putting your anger off. Until you go through it, you can't get out of it.

Inspiration more often comes during the work than before it, because the largest part of the job of an artist is to listen to the work.

Das Werk lobt den Meister. (German: The work proves the craftsman.)

In art we are once again able to do all the things we have forgotten; we are able to walk on water; we speak to the angels who call us; we move, unfettered, among the stars.

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.

To create a work of art, great or small, is work, hard work, and work requires discipline and order.