Quotes from Madeleine L'Engle

The more limited our language is, the more limited we are; the more limited the literature we give to our children, the more limited their capacity to respond, and therefore, in their turn, to create.

Questions, questions."Gaudior stomped one silver hoof. "I am not some kind of computer. Only machines have glib answers for everything.

the European attitude that the very young can be charming and delightful and pretty but only a mature woman can be beautiful; and only a mature man can be strong enough to be truly tender.

I hope you don't mean that," I said finally. "But I do. Alicia represents our church. Therefore, I am against our church. But, like most thinking human beings, I feel the need of a god to worship and to go to for comfort and succor. Therefore I'm going to the devil.

Good helps us, the stars help us, perhaps what you would call light helps us, love helps us.

And if God approves of people like Alicia, he doesn't want me; and the devil does. It's nice to be wanted, Mrs. Franklin. I haven't been wanted for a long time now.

Expand my love, Lord, so I can help to bear the pain, help your love move my love into the tired prostitute with false eyelashes and bunioned feet, the corrupt policeman with his hand open for graft, the addict, the derelict, the woman in the mink coat and discontented mouth, the high school girl with heavy books and frightened eyes. Help me through these scandalous particulars to understand your love. Help me to pray.

I don't underestimate knowledge. But we get into trouble when we confuse it with truth.

The better word, of course, is joy, because it doesn't have anything to do with pain, physical or spiritual. I have been wholly in joy when I have been in pain—childbirth is the obvious example. Joy is what has made the pain bearable and, in the end, creative rather than destructive.

Getting out of the way and listening is not something that comes easily, either in art or in prayer.

There was yesterday, which was gone, which was only a dream. There was tomorrow, which was a vision not unlike today. When was always Now, for there was little looking either backward or forward in this young world. If Now was good, yesterday, though a pleasurable dream, was not necessary. If Now was good, tomorrow would likely continue to be so.

I'll ask you a riddle. What do you have the more of, the more of it you give away?

It is only when we are fully rooted that we are really able to move.

Fewmets to Mr. Jenkins, anyhow.

Time isn't any more important than size. All that is required of you is to be in the Now, in this moment which has been given us.

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.

How can we set limits that are creative and not destructive?

The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called, but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world

Instead of rejoicing in this glorious "impossible" which gives meaning and dignity to our lives, we try to domesticate God, to make his mighty actions comprehensible to our finite minds.

All of Madeleine's writing, fiction and nonfiction, was an example of how all narrative is fiction, and all fiction can be true.

There's more to life than just the things that can be explained by encyclopedias and facts. Facts alone are not adequate.

to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are.

it's amazing what passing the half-century mark does to free one to be eccentric.

We must all hang together, or assuredly we will all hang separately.