Quotes from Madeleine L'Engle

The figure in the icon is not meant to represent literally what Peter or John or any of the apostles looked like, or what Mary looked like, nor the child, Jesus. But, the orthodox painter feels, Jesus of Nazareth did not walk around Galilee faceless. The icon of Jesus may not look like the man Jesus two thousand years ago, but it represents some *quality* of Jesus, or his mother, or his followers, and so becomes an open window through which we can be given a new glimpse of the love of God.

Oh, why must you make me look at unpleasant things when there are so many delightful ones to see?" Again Mrs Which's voice reverberated through the cave. "Therre willl nno llonggerr bee sso many y pplleasanntt thinggss tto llookk att iff rressponssible ppeoplle ddo nnott ddo ssomethingg abboutt thee unnppleassanntt oness.

My dear, I'm seldom sure of anything. Life at best is a precarious business...

If we knew ahead of time what was going to happen we'd be—we'd be like the people on Camazotz, with no lives of our own, with everything all planned and done for us.

It's my worst trouble, getting fond. If I didn't get fond I could be happy all the time.

The part of us that has to be burned away is something like the deadwood on the bush; it has to go, to be burned in the terrible fire of reality, until there is nothing left but . . . what we are meant to be.

IT was the most horrible, the most repellent thing she had ever seen, far more nauseating then anything she had ever imagined with her consious mind, or that had ever tormented her in her most terrible nightmares.

The creative impulse can be killed, but it cannot be taught...What a teacher can do...in working with children, is to give the flame enough oxygen so that it can burn. As far as I'm concerned, this providing of oxygen is one of the noblest of all vocations.

Love, she insisted, is not power, which she considered always coercive. To love is to be vulnerable; and it is only in vulnerability and risk—not safety and security—that we overcome darkness.

As long as we know what it's about, then we can have the courage to go wherever we are asked to go, even if we fear that the road may take us through danger and pain.

You're good in school. Everybody likes you." "For all the most unimportant reasons," Calvin said. "There hasn't been anybody, anybody in the world I could talk to. Sure, I can function on the same level as everybody else, I can hold myself down, but it isn't me.

An I Q cannot measure artistic ability. A potential Picasso may be a flop at objective vocabulary or number tests. An I Q does not measure a capacity for love...How do we teach a child - our own, or those in a classroom to have compassion: to allow people to be different; to understand that like is not equal; to experiment; to laugh: to love.

Maybe the theatre isn't any place for a reasonable human being after all. It keeps your emotions in such a constant state of upheaval. It's really terribly wearing. I wonder if I could stand it, one emotional upset after the other just going on and on for the rest of my life.

I am slowly coming to understand with all my heart as well as my head that love is not a feeling. It is a person.

Charles Wallace and the unicorn moved through the time-spinning reaches of a far glazy, and he realized that the galaxy itself was part of a mighty orchestra, and each star and planet within the galaxy added its own instrument to the music of the spheres. As long as the ancient harmonies were sung, the universe would not entirely lose its joy.

We are a generation which is crying loudly to tear down all structure in order to find freedom, and discovering, when order is demolished, that instead of freedom we have death.

When I start a new seminar I tell my students that I will undoubtedly contradict myself, and that I will mean both things.

I cannot find it in me to believe that God enjoys long faces and scowls at merriment.

How do I make more than a fumbling attempt to explain that faith is not legislated, that it is not a small box which works twenty-four hours a day? If I 'believe' for two minutes once every month or so, I'm doing well.

If God's peace is in our hearts, we carry it with us, and it can be given to those around us, not by our own will or virtue, but by the Holy Spirit working through us. We cannot give what we do not have, but if the spirit blows through the dark clouds, and enters our hearts, we can be used as vehicles of peace, and our own peace will be thereby deepened. The more peace we give away, the more we have.

We don't want to feel less when we have finished a book; we want to feel that new possibilities of being have been opened to us. We don't want to close a book with a sense that life is totally unfair and that there is no light in the darkness; we want to feel that we have been given illumination.

I would, quite often, like to be grownup, wise, and sophisticated. But these gifts are not mine.

If we allow our high creativity to remain alive, we will never be bored. We can pray, standing in line at the super market. Or we can be lost in awe at all the people around us, their lives full of glory and tragedy, and suddenly we will have the beginnings of a painting, a story, a song.

All of life is a story