Quotes from Madeleine L'Engle

Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.

On the other side of pain, there is still love.

Love isn't how you feel. It's what you do. I've never had a feeling in my life. As a matter of fact, I matter only with earth people.

We do not have to understand in order to believe that behind the mystery and the fascination there is love.

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.

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.

Refusing to accept God's love because we're unworthy - of course we're unworthy! - is another golden calf.

Love. That was what she had that IT did not have.

I love, therefore I am vulnerable.

Truth is eternal. Knowledge is changeable. It is disastrous to confuse them.

Sometimes when we have to speak suddenly we come closer to the truth than when we have time to think.

As human beings, the closest we can get to truth is through story.

No matter how true I believe what I am writing to be, if the reader cannot also participate in that truth, then I have failed.

Vitam impendere vero. To stake one's life for the truth.

It's hard to let go anything we love. We live in a world which teaches us to clutch. But when we clutch we're left with a fistful of ashes.

When we can play with the unself-conscious concentration of a child, this is: art: prayer: love.

As far as I'm concerned, there is only one absolute: God is love.

If our love for each other really is participatory, then all other human relationships nourish it; it is inclusive, never exclusive.

The joys of love...last only a moment. The sorrows of love last all the life long.

Love isn't how you feel. It's what you do.

Love is the one surprise.

If she could give love to IT perhaps it would shrivel up and die, for she was sure that IT could not withstand love.

Love can't be pinned down by a definition, and it certainly can't be proved, any more than anything else important in life can be proved.

Their love was a bright flower, youthful and radiantly beautiful.