Top 427 Quotes & Sayings by Madeleine L'Engle

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.

We have much to be judged on when he comes, slums and battlefields and insane asylums, but these are the symptoms of our illness and the result of our failures in love.

That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along.

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

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... To be alive is to be vulnerable.

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

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.

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

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.

Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling.

In the evening of life we shall be judged on love, and not one of us is going to come off very well, and were it not for my absolute faith in the loving forgiveness of my Lord I could not call on him to come.

With each book I write, I become more and more convinced that the books have a life of their own, quite apart from me.

It is the ability to choose which makes us human.

We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.

A book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate.

God promised to make you free. He never promised to make you independent.

The growth of love is not a straight line, but a series of hills and valleys.

In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there's no danger that we will confuse God's work with our own, or God's glory with our own.

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.

A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.

But grief still has to be worked through. It is like walking through water. Sometimes there are little waves lapping about my feet. Sometimes there is an enormous breaker that knocks me down. Sometimes there is a sudden and fierce squall. But I know that many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.

We do not love each other without changing each other.

Like it or not, we either add to the darkness of indifference and out-and-out evil which surrounds us or we light a candle to see by.

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.

I don't understand it any more than you do, but one thing I've learned is that you don't have to understand things for them to be.

If we commit ourselves to one person for life, this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation.

God understands. And God understands that part of us which is more than we think we are.

To pray is to listen, to move through my own chattering to God, to that place where I can be silent and listen to what God may have to say.

God is over all things, under all things; outside all; within, but not enclosed; without, but not excluded; above, but not raised up; below; but not depressed; wholly above, presiding; wholly without, embracing; wholly within, filling.

I like to take the time out to listen to the trees, much in the same way that I listen to a sea shell, holding my ear against the rough bark of the trunk, hearing the inner singing of the sap. It's a lovely sound, the beating of the heart of the tree.

... nothing loved is ever lost or perished.

I wish that we worried more about asking the right questions instead of being so hung up on finding answers.

The world has been abnormal for so long that we've forgotten what it's like to live in a peaceful and reasonable climate. If there is to be any peace or reason, we have to create it in our own hearts and homes.

I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.

When we believe in the impossible, it becomes possible, and we can do all kinds of extraordinary things.

We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.

Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.

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.

The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain.

If we are not willing to fail we will never accomplish anything. All creative acts involve the risk of failure.

Qui plussait, plus se tait. French, you know. The more a man knows, the less he talks.

The concentration of a small child at play is analogous to the concentration of the artist of any discipline. In real play, which is real concentration, the child is not only outside time, he is outside himself.

I think your mythology would call them fallen angels. War and hate are their business, and one of their chief weapons is un-Naming - making people not know who they are. If someone knows who he is, really knows, then he doesn't need to hate. That's why we still need Namers, because there are places throughout the universe like your planet Earth. When everyone is really and truly Named, then the Echthroi will be vanquished.

I believe that consistently we need to look for good, and not for evil, that when we look for evil we call up evil, while heaven comes closer when we acknowledge it.

We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes...

One reason nearly half my books are for children is the glorious fact that the minds of children are still open to the living word; in the child, nightside and sunside are not yet separated; fantasy contains truths which cannot be stated in terms of proof.

To be a witness means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist.

What I believe is so magnificent, so glorious, that it is beyond finite comprehension. To believe that the universe was created by a purposeful, benign Creator is one thing. To believe that this Creator took on human vesture, accepted death and mortality, was tempted, betrayed, broken, and all for love of us, defies reason. It is so wild that it terrifies some Christians who try to dogmatize their fear by lashing out at other Christians, because tidy Christianity with all answers given is easier than one which reaches out to the wild wonder of God's love, a love we don't even have to earn.

If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are.

Because we fail to listen to each other's stories, we are becoming a fragmented human race.

I cannot believe that God wants punishment to go on interminably any more than does a loving parent. The entire purpose of loving punishment is to teach, and it lasts only as long as is needed for the lesson. And the lesson is always love.

Human beings are the only creatures who are allowed to fail. If an ant fails, it's dead. But we're allowed to learn from our mistakes and from our failures. And that's how I learn, by falling flat on my face and picking myself up and starting all over again.

Nothing, no one, is too small to matter. What you do is going to make a difference.

There are times when I feel that he has withdrawn from me, and I have often given him cause, but Easter is always the answer to My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!

Remember the root word of humble and human is the same: humus: earth. We are dust. We are created; it is God who made us and not we ourselves. But we were made to be co-creators with our maker.

Man has a viewpoint, but God has the view.

We do not draw people to Christ 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.

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.

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