Quotes from Madeleine L'Engle

Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith. Faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.

We don't have to know everything at once. We just do one thing at a time, as it is given us to do.

Because you're not what I would have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth, you are.

God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.

We tend to think things are new because we just discovered them.

Jesus was not a theologian. He was God who told stories.

Oh child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the affect of extreme complication. -Aunt Beast

Mother says she can never stay mad at Daddy no matter how hard she tries. And Daddy says, ' Stay mad! You won't even let me get mad at you,' and then they laugh. Aren't you sorry for people who don't laugh, Vicky? Yes. And people who don't love music and books. And people, John said.

If I didn't get fond I could be happy all the time.

Das Werk lobt den Meister. (German: The work proves the craftsman.)

And I can't say it now. I can't say what I want to say. I hold you-- I-- I clutch you, because I love you so desperately, and time is so short, we have such a little time in which to live and be young, even at best, and I put my arms around you and hold you because I want to love you while I can and I want to know I'm loving you, only it doesn't mean anything because you aren't afraid. You aren't frightened so that you want to clutch it all while you can.

Wherever there's laughter, there is heaven.

George MacDonald gives me renewed strength during times of trouble--times when I have seen people tempted to deny God--when he says, The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.

But grief still has to be worked through. It is like walking through water. Sometimes there are little waves lapping about my feet. Sometimes there is an enormous breaker that knocks me down. Sometimes there is a sudden and fierce squall. But I know that many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.

Love is the one surprise.

Darkness was and darkness was good. As with light. Light and Darkness dancing together, born together, born of each other, neither preceding, neither following, both fully being, in joyful rhythm.

If our lives are truly hid with Christ in God, the astounding thing is that this hiddenness is revealed in all that we do and say and write. What we are is going to be visible in our art, no matter how secular (on the surface) the subject may be.

Light and darkness dancing together, born together, born of each other, neither preceding, neither following, both fully being in joyful rhythm.

In the final exam in the Chaucer course we were asked why he used certain verbal devices, certain adjectives, why he had certain characters behave in certain ways. And I wrote, 'I don't think Chaucer had any idea why he did any of these things. That isn't the way people write.' I believe this as strongly now as I did then. Most of what is best in writing isn't done deliberately.

The growth of love is not a straight line, but a series of hills and valleys.

When I start a new seminar I tell my students that I will undoubtedly contradict myself, and that I will mean both things. But an acceptance of contradiction is no excuse for fuzzy thinking. We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledge that they cannot take us all the way.

My lovely shining fragile broken house is filled with flowers and founded on a rock.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

My dear, I'm seldom sure of anything. Life at best is a precarious business, and we aren't told that difficult or painful things won't happen, just that it matters. It matters not just to us but to the entire universe.