Quotes from Madeleine L'Engle

I don't believe that we can write any kind of story without including, whether we intend to or not, our response to the world around us.

the chief reason that [A Wrinkle in Time] was rejected for over two years and by thirty-odd publishers was because it is a difficult book for many adults, the decision was made to market it as a children's book; it won a medal for children's books.

Remember you have to go at his speed not your own...Adults take longer at this kind of thing then we do, particularly adults...who [haven't] tried new thoughts for a long time...but sometimes adults can go deeper then we can, if we're patient.

And the sun with its brightness, And the snow with its whiteness, And the fire with all the strength it hath, And the lightning with its rapid wrath, And the winds with their swiftness along their path, And the sea with its deepness, And the rocks with their steepness, And the earth with its starkness, All these I place By God's almighty help and grace Between myself and the powers of darkness!

We do wrong, with all the best will in the world. And sometimes we do right without even knowing it.

You must once and for all give up being worried about successes and failures. Don't let that concern you. It's your duty to go on working steadily day by day, quite quietly, to be prepared for mistakes, which are inevitable, and for failures.

We live under the illusion that if we can acquire complete control, we can understand God or we can write the great American novel.

Juvenile or adult, War and Peace or Treasure Island, Pride and Prejudice or Beauty and the Beast, a great work of the imagination is one of the highest forms of communication of truth that mankind has reached. But a great piece of literature does not try to coerce you to believe it or to agree with it. A great piece of literature simply is.

those who sought power were greedy, wanting gifts, and bribes, and willing to steal from the poor.

I was just laughing because I felt good. You act as though you keep expecting people to laugh at you. You ought to just laugh at them. I'll bet they're funnier than you are.

Theron thought he could solve problems by brushing them aside as though they didn't exist. But they do exist, they still exist, and unless responsible people do something about them, our land is in for fresh disaster, brother against brother, black against white.

You just look at things nobody else can see,' Dennys added, 'and listen to things nobody else can hear, and think about them.' Meg defended her mother. 'It would be a good idea if more people knew how to think. After Mother thinks about something long enough, then she puts it into practice. Or someone else does.

Mother," Meg pursued. "Charles says I'm not one thing or the other, not flesh nor fowl nor good red herring." "Oh for crying out loud," Calvin said, "you're Meg, aren't you? Come on and let's go for a walk.

What did other people think? What did other children think when they weren't with Cecily? And that was funny. Cecily had never realized that they thought at all when they weren't with her.

A. J. Wheeler. He says: "Nothing is more important about the quantum principle than this, that it destroys the concept of the world as 'sitting out there,' with the observer safely separated from it by a 20-centimeter slab of plate glass. Even to observe so minuscule an object as an electron, we must shatter the glass.

The reaper lacks the eyes to hold him back;

Yesterday's heresy becomes tomorrow's dogma," the bishop replied mildly, and Polly thought once again of Giordano Bruno.

It is not only in the religious writings of various peoples that I find truth. I find that my forbearance is widened, my understanding of human potential expanded, as I read fiction, even if it is only to disagree with a narrow or ugly view of life, or to turn away from discontent. The fiction to which I turn and return is that which has a noble understanding of God's purpose for all that has been created.

Love. That's what makes persons know who they are. You're full of love, Meg, but you don't know how to stay within it when it's not easy.

she was very frightened because the world had changed all of a sudden and it wasn't hers anymore and she didn't know who owned it.

If we knew each morning that there was going to be another morning, and on and on and on, we'd tend not to notice the sunrise, or hear the birds, or the waves rolling into shore. We'd tend not to treasure our time with the people we love. Simply the awareness that our mortal lives had a beginning and will have an end enhances the quality of our living. Perhaps it's even more intense when we know that the termination of the body is near, but it shouldn't be.

I started to write when I was five, and as I look back on fifty years of this work, I am forced to see that my own continuing development involves pain. It is pain and weakness and constant failures which keep me from pride and help me to grow.

The obligations of normal human kindness—chesed, as the Hebrew has it—that we all owe. But there's a kind of vanity in thinking you can nurse the world. There's a kind of vanity in goodness.

When Sporos Deepens," Proginoskes told Mr. Jenkins, "it means that he comes of age. It means that he grows up. The temptation for farandola or for man or for star is to stay an immature pleasure-seeker. When we seek our own pleasure as the ultimate good we place ourselves as the center of the universe. A fara or a man or a star has his place in the universe, but nothing created is the center.