Quotes from Madeleine L'Engle

I would like to travel light on this journey of life, to get rid of the encumbrances I acquire each day.

Creativity is a way of living life, no matter what our vocation, or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts...

I was at the annual meeting of a state library association a few years later, when the children were in the process of leaving the nest, and one of the librarians asked me, What do you think you and Hugh have done which was the best for your children? I answered immediately and without thinking, We love each other.

And joy is always a promise.

But she finds it so difficult to verbalize, Charles dear. It helps her if she can quote instead of working out words of her own.

For the things that are seen are temporal, but things that are unseen are eternal.

Stay angry, little Meg," Mrs Whatsit whispered. "You will need all your anger now.

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

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

Aeschylus writes, In our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

If we all knew each morning that there was going to be another morning, and on and on and on, we's tend not to notice the sunrise, or hear the birds, or the waves rolling into the 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 used to feel guilty about spending morning hours working on a book; about fleeing to the brook in the afternoon. It took several summers of being totally frazzled by September to make me realize that this was a false guilt. I'm much more use to family and friends when I'm not physically and spiritually depleted than when I spend my energies as though they were unlimited. They are not. The time at the typewriter and the time at the brook refresh me and put me into a more workable perspective.

La experiencia es la madre de la ciencia. Spanish, my dears. Cervantes. Experience is the mother of knowledge.

We do not know what things look like, as you say, the beast said. We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing, this seeing.

Wait until tomorrow to find what tomorrow holds.

If thou could'st empty all thyself of self Like to a shell dishabited Then might He find thee on the ocean shelf And say This is not dead and fill thee with Himself instead. But thou art all replete with very thou And hast such shrewd activity That when He comes He says This is enow Unto itself - 'twere better let it be It is so small and full there is no room for me.

If we are to be aware of life while we are living it, we must have the courage to relinquish our hard-earned control of ourselves.

We were sent here for something. And we know that all things work together for good them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose

An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers...To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy...If I try self consciously to become a person, I will never be one. The most real people, those who are able to forget their selfish selves, who have true compassion, are usually the most distinct individuals

In art, either as creators or participators, we are helped to remember some of the glorious things we have forgotten, and some of the terrible things we were asked to endure...

Reading about the response of people in stories, plays, poems, helps us to respond more courageously and openly at our own moments of turning.

But if I knew everything, there would be no wonder, because what I believe in is far more than I know.

If we accept that we have at least an iota of free will, we cannot throw it back the moment things go wrong. Like a human parent, God will help us when we ask for help, but in a way that will make us more mature, more real, not in a way that will diminish us.

It's a very American trait, this wanting people to think well of us. It's a young want, and I am ashamed of it in myself. I am not always a good daughter, even though my lacks are in areas different from her complaints. Haven't I learned yet that the desire to be perfect is always disastrous and, at the least, loses me in the mire of false guilt?