Quotes from Madeleine L'Engle

Great art always transcends its culture, while lesser art merely reflects it.

It is possible to suffer and despair an entire lifetime and still not give up the art of laughter.

Great art transcends its culture and touches on that which is eternal.

Art should communicate with as many people as possible.

I can't think of one great human being in the arts, or in history generally, who conformed, who succeeded, as education experts tell us children must succeed, with his peer group.

If it's bad art, it's bad religion, no matter how pious the subject.

All forms of art are consciousness expanders, and I am convinced that they will take us further, and more consciously, than drugs.

For an artist is not a consumer, as our commercials urge us to be. An artist is a nourisher and a creator who knows that during the act of creation there is collaboration. We do not create alone.

I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, "Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me."

Now I am setting out into the unknown. It will take me a long while to work through the grief. There are no shortcuts; it has to be gone through.

the artist is not separate from the work and therefore cannot judge it.

Inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it.

She began to feel the sense of wonderful elation that always came to her when beauty took hold of her and made her forget her fears.

I am not some kind of computer. Only machines have glib answers for everything.

We look not at the things which are what you would call seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal. But the things that are not seen are eternal.

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

To be born is to start the journey towards death.

Lords of spirit, Lords of breath, Lords of fireflies, stars, and light, Who will keep the world from death?Who will stop the coming night?Blue eyes, blue eyes, have the sight.

In my dreams, I never have an age.

In our dreams we are able to fly . . . and that is a remembering of how we were meant to be.

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.

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

A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming.

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.