Madeleine L'Engle Quotes & Sayings

In my dreams, I never have an age. — Madeleine L'Engle

But when the world is, indeed, in chaos, then an affirmation of cosmos becomes essential. — Madeleine L'Engle

In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there's no danger that we will confuse God's work with our own, or God's glory with our own. — Madeleine L'Engle

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 ... — Madeleine L'Engle

The degree of talent, the size of the gift, is immaterial. All artists must listen, but not all hear great symphonies, see wide canvasses, conceive complex, character-filled novels. No
matter, the creative act is the same, and it is an act of faith. — Madeleine L'Engle

The artist cannot hold back; it is impossible, because writing, or any other discipline of art, involves participation in suffering, in the ills and the occasional stabbing joys that come from being part of the human drama. — Madeleine L'Engle

The uncommon man has done the impossible and there has been that much more light in the world because of it. Children respond to heroes by thinking creatively and sometimes in breaking beyond the bounds of the impossible in their turn, and so becoming heroes themselves. — Madeleine L'Engle

There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation. — Madeleine L'Engle

Picasso says that an artists paints not to ask a question but because he has found something and he wants to share - he cannot help it - what he has found. — Madeleine L'Engle

I am not some kind of computer. Only machines have glib answers for everything. — Madeleine L'Engle

But his love is greater than all our hate and he will not rest until Judas has turned to him, until Satan has turned to him, until dark has turned to him; until we can all, all of us without exception, freely return his look of love with love in our own eyes and hearts. And then, healed, whole, complete but not finished, we swill know the joy of being co-creators with the one to whom we call.
Amen. Even so, come Lord Jesus. — Madeleine L'Engle

To be half a century plus is wonderfully exciting, because I haven't lost any of my past, and I am free to stand on the rock of all that the past has taught me as I look to the future. — Madeleine L'Engle

We are a generation which is crying loudly to tear down all structure in order to find freedom, and discovering, when order is demolished, that instead of freedom we have death. — Madeleine L'Engle

We do not have to understand in order to believe that behind the mystery and the fascination there is love. — Madeleine L'Engle

I would, quite often, like to be grownup, wise, and sophisticated. But these gifts are not mine. — Madeleine L'Engle

Where there is an unreconciled quarrel, everybody suffers — Madeleine L'Engle

When we lose our myths we lose our place in the universe. — Madeleine L'Engle

We do live, all of us, on many different levels, and for most artists the world of imagination is more real than the world of the kitchen sink. — Madeleine L'Engle

Art is an affirmation of life, a rebuttal of death. And here we blunder into paradox again, for during the creation of any form of art, art which affirms the value and the holiness of life, the artist must die. To serve a work of art, great or small, is to die, to die to self. — Madeleine L'Engle

It was the same way with silence. This was more than silence. A deaf person can feel vibrations. Here there was nothing to feel. — Madeleine L'Engle

But I'm not patient!" cried Meg passionately. "I've never been patient! — Madeleine L'Engle

If we allow our "high creativity" to remain alive, we will never be bored. We can pray, standing in line at the super market. Or we can be lost in awe at all the people around us, their lives full of glory and tragedy, and suddenly we will have the beginnings of a painting, a story, a song. — Madeleine L'Engle

Meg took a batch of forks from the drawer and turned them over and over, looking at them. "I'm all confused again." "Oh, so 'm I," Calvin said gaily. "But now at least I know we're going somewhere. — Madeleine L'Engle

We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledging that they cannot take us all the way. — Madeleine L'Engle

The foolish of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of god is stronger than men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that may not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called, but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath choses the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. And bade things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are. — Madeleine L'Engle

My protagonists, male and female, are me. — Madeleine L'Engle

Lords of melody and song,
Lords of roses burning bright,
Blue will right the ancient wrong,
Though the way is dark and long,
Blue will shine with loving light. — Madeleine L'Engle

Life ... is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. — Madeleine L'Engle

One of the many sad results of the Industrial Revolution was that we came to depend more than ever on the intellect, and to ignore the intuition with its symbolic thinking. — Madeleine L'Engle

We are going to your father," Mrs. Which said.
"But where is he?" Meg went over to Mrs. Which and stamped as though she were as young as Charles Wallace.
Mrs. Whatsit answered in a voice that was low but quite firm. "On a planet that has given in. So you must prepare to be very strong. — Madeleine L'Engle

When a character wants to do one thing and I want him to do another, the character is usually right. — Madeleine L'Engle

To share poetry is one of the most intimate acts of friendship possible ... — Madeleine L'Engle

Accepting that we are angry is a healthy and appropriate response as long as we don't get stuck in it. Acknowledging it is one way of going through it. — Madeleine L'Engle

Growing up is a process that never ends. It isn't a point you attain so you can say, Hooray, I'm grown up. Some people never grow up. And nobody ever finishes growing. Or shouldn't. If you stop you might as well quit. What I have to tell you is that it never gets any easier. It goes right on being rough forever. But nothing that's easy is worth anything. You ought to have learned that by now. What happens as you keep on growing is that all of a sudden you realize that it's more exciting and beautiful than scary and awful. — Madeleine L'Engle

And it came to me as I stood on the desert sand, looking at the Great Pyramid, that what any civilization says about God tells us more about that civilization than it does about God. — Madeleine L'Engle

We all tend to make zealous judgments and thereby close ourselves off from revelation. If we feel that we already know something in its totality, then we fail to keep our ears and eyes open to that which may expand or even changes that which we so zealously think we know. — Madeleine L'Engle

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. — Madeleine L'Engle

Meg, when people don't know who they are, they are open either to being Xed, or Named — Madeleine L'Engle

We want nothing from you that you do without grace or [ ... ] understanding. — Madeleine L'Engle

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' ... I am grateful that Jesus cried out those words, because it means that I need never fear to cry them out myself. I need never fear, nor feel any sense of guilt, during the inevitable moments of forsakenness. They come to us all. They are part of the soul's growth. — Madeleine L'Engle

Beware of pride and arrogance, Charles, for they may betray you. — Madeleine L'Engle

Pray all you like, ask anything you want, but don't forget that he never promised he'd say yes. He never guaranteed us anything. Not anything at all. Except one thing. Just one thing ...
That he cares ... That is all. Nothing else. — Madeleine L'Engle

Jesus, who comes across in the Gospels as extraordinarily strong, begged in the garden, with drops of sweat like blood running down his face, that he might be spared the terrible cup ahead of him, the betrayal and abandonment by his friends, death on the cross. Because Jesus cried out in anguish, we may too. But our fear is less frequent and infinitely less if we are close to the Creator. Jesus, having cried out, then let his fear go, and moved on. — Madeleine L'Engle

If I have something I want to say that is too difficult for adults to swallow, then I write it in a book for children. Children still haven't closed themselves off with fear of the unknown, fear of revolution, or the scramble for security. They are still familiar with the inborn vocabulary of myth — Madeleine L'Engle

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. — Madeleine L'Engle

Right now I am like the unborn baby in the womb, knowing nothing except the comforting warmth of the amniotic fluid in which I swim, the comforting nourishment entering my body from a source I cannot see or understand. My whole being comes from an unseen, unknown nurturer. By that nurturer I am totally loved and protected, and that love is forever. It does not end when I am precipitated out of the safe waters of the womb into the unsafe world. It will. It end when I breathe my last, mortal breath. That love manifested itself joyously in the creation of the universe, became particular for us in Jesus, and will show itself most gloriously in the Second Coming. We need not fear. — Madeleine L'Engle

The part of us that has to be burned away is something like the deadwood on the bush; it has to go, to be burned in the terrible fire of reality, until there is nothing left but ... what we are meant to be. — Madeleine L'Engle

Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling. — Madeleine L'Engle

When a bride insists on telling her lover everything, I suspect she is looking for a father, not a husband. — Madeleine L'Engle

It strikes me as somewhat odd that the people who use God's name most frequently, both in life and in literature, usually don't believe in him. — Madeleine L'Engle

Calvin said, "Do you know that this is the first time I've seen you without your glasses?"
"I'm blind as a bat without them. I'm near-sighted, like father."
"Well, you know what, you've got dream-boat eyes," Calvin said. "Listen, you go right on wearing your glasses. I don't think I want anybody else to see what gorgeous eyes you have. — Madeleine L'Engle

Man is; it matters to him; this is terrifying unless it matters to God, too, because this is the only possible reason we can matter to ourselves ... — Madeleine L'Engle

Very few of us understand Honorable Bird, except to acknowledge that without his power and grace nothing would be written, painted, or composed at all. To say anything beyond this about the creative process is like pulling all the petals off a flower in order to analyze it, and ending up having destroyed the flower. — Madeleine L'Engle

As long as we know what it's about, then we can have the courage to go wherever we are asked to go, even if we fear that the road may take us through danger and pain. — Madeleine L'Engle

I love, therefore I am vulnerable. — Madeleine L'Engle

Only a fool is not afraid. — Madeleine L'Engle

I hate it!" Charles Wallace cried passionately. "I hate the Dark Thing! — Madeleine L'Engle

I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be ... This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages ... the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide ... Far too many people misunderstand what *putting away childish things* means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year-old means being grownup. When I'm with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grown-up, then I don't ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a child's awareness and joy, and *be* fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup. — Madeleine L'Engle

She was silent; the great wings almost stopped moving; only a delicate stirring seemed to keep them aloft. "Listen, then," Mrs. Whatsit said. The resonant voice rose and the words seemed to be all around them so that Meg felt that she could almost reach out and touch them:
"Sing unto the Lord a new song, and His praise from the end of the earth, ye that go down to the sea, and all that there is therein; the isles, and the inhabitants thereof. Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift their voice; let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory unto the Lord! — Madeleine L'Engle

Gregory of Nyssa points out that Moses's vision of God began with the light, with the visible burning bush, the bush which was bright with fire and was not consumed; but afterwards, God spoke to him in a cloud. After the glory which could be seen with human eyes, he began to see the glory which is beyond and after light. The shadows are deepening all around us. — Madeleine L'Engle

So I know, with a sense of responsibility that hits me with a cold fist in the pit of my stomach, that what I am is going to make more difference to my own children and those I talk to and teach than anything I tell them. — Madeleine L'Engle

I am also four, and twelve, and fifteen, and twenty-three, and thirty-one, and forty-five and ... and ... and ... — Madeleine L'Engle

I saw two beings in the hues of the youth
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill ... And both were young
and one was beautiful
-The Dream, Canto II
Lord Byron — Madeleine L'Engle

She screamed out... and whether it was to help him or for him to help her, she did not know. — Madeleine L'Engle

This seemed an obvious sign from heaven. I should stop trying to write ... So the rejection on the fortieth birthday seemed an unmistakable command: Stop this foolishness and learn to make cherry pie. I covered up the typewriter in a great gesture of renunciation. Then I walked around and around the room, bawling my head off. I was totally, unutterably miserable. Suddenly I stopped, because I realized what my subconscious mind was doing while I was sobbing: my subconscious mind was busy working out a novel about failure. — Madeleine L'Engle

Compassion is nothing one feels with the intellect alone. Compassion is particular; it is never general. — Madeleine L'Engle

Emily looked over at Courtney. He was still asleep.
For a long time she had thought that if you loved anyone you had to tell him everything: go to him and confess as in the dream; there could be no secrets. But now in the dark of early morning with the copper bottle cold against her fee she felt that this desire to tell all was simply an evasion of responsibility, a weakness in wanting to push on to the person you love something that is your own responsibility to solve. It would be easier for her to tell Courtney all about Abe, to come to him as he sat at this desk in the chill little workroom and confess, to hand the responsibility for her ambivalence to him, to let him settle the problem of her puny conscience for her.
But I know, she thought, lying there beside him on Madame Pedroti's lumpy bed, that if I love Courtney that is the last thing I must do. If I love Courtney he must never know. — Madeleine L'Engle

Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind. — Madeleine L'Engle

Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous. — Madeleine L'Engle

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. — Madeleine L'Engle

Maybe we have to sin, to know ourselves human, faulty and flawed, before there is any possibility of greatness." - Nik — Madeleine L'Engle

IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT.
In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraithlike shadows that raced along the ground.
The house shook.
Wrapped in her quilt, Meg shook.
...
The window rattled madly in the wind, and she pulled the quilt close about her. Curled up on one of her pillows, a gray f luff of kitten yawned, showing its pink tongue, tucked its head under again, and went back to sleep. — Madeleine L'Engle

One night after dinner a group of us were talking about the supernatural, and one of our dinner guests said that when the electric light was invented, people began to lose the dimension of the supernatural. In the days before we could touch a switch and flood every section of the room with light, there were always shadows in the corner, shadows which moved with candlelight, with firelight; and these shadows were an outward and visible sign that things are not always what they seem; there are things which are not visible to the mortal human being; there are things beyond our ken. — Madeleine L'Engle

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. — Madeleine L'Engle

I have a point of view. You have a point of view. God has view. — Madeleine L'Engle

So perhaps the reason I shuddered at the idea of writing something about 'Christian art' is that to paint a picture or to write a story or to compose a song is an incarnational activity. The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birth-giver. In a very real sense the artist (male or female) should be like Mary, who, when the angel told her that she was to bear the Messiah, was obedient to the command. Obedience is an unpopular word nowadays, but the artist must be obedient to the work, whether it be a symphony, a painting, or a story for a small child. 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.' And the artist either says 'My soul doth magnify the Lord' and willingly becomes the bearer of the work, or refuses; but the obedient response is not necessicarily a conscious one, and not everyone has the humble, courageous obedience of Mary. — Madeleine L'Engle

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. — Madeleine L'Engle

Qui plussait, plus se tait. French, you know. The more a man knows, the less he talks. — Madeleine L'Engle

I'm apt to get drunk on words ... Ontology: the word about the essence of things; the word about being. — Madeleine L'Engle

Man has a viewpoint, but God has the view. — Madeleine L'Engle

Why are we so afraid of silence? Teenagers cannot study without their records; they walk along the street with their transistors. Grownups are as bad if not worse; we turn on the TV or the radio the minute we come into the house or start the car. The pollution of noise in our cities is as destructive as the pollution of air. We show our fear of silence in our conversation: I wonder if the orally-minded Elizabethan's used "um" and "er" the way we do? And increasingly prevalent is what my husband calls an articulated pause: "You know." We interject "you know" meaninglessly into every sentence, in order that the flow of our speech should not be interrupted by such a terrifying thing as silence. — Madeleine L'Engle

Well, I think you're handsome, — Madeleine L'Engle

The journey homewards. Coming home. That's what it's all about. The journey to the coming of the Kingdom. That's probably the chief difference between the Christian and the secular artist
the purpose of the work, be it story or music or painting, is to further the coming of the kingdom, to make us aware of our status as children of God, and to turn our feet toward home. — Madeleine L'Engle

But BEing time is never wasted time. When we are BEing, not only are we collaborating with chronological time, but we are touching on kairos, and are freed from the normal restrictions of time. — Madeleine L'Engle

One reason nearly half my books are for children is the glorious fact that the minds of children are still open to the living word; in the child, nightside and sunside are not yet separated; fantasy contains truths which cannot be stated in terms of proof. — Madeleine L'Engle

What I believe is so magnificent, so glorious, that it is beyond finite comprehension. To believe that the universe was created by a purposeful, benign Creator is one thing. To believe that this Creator took on human vesture, accepted death and mortality, was tempted, betrayed, broken, and all for love of us, defies reason. It is so wild that it terrifies some Christians who try to dogmatize their fear by lashing out at other Christians, because tidy Christianity with all answers given is easier than one which reaches out to the wild wonder of God's love, a love we don't even have to earn. — Madeleine L'Engle

It was a star," Mrs. Whatsit said sadly. "A star giving up its life in battle with the Thing. It won, oh, yes, my children, it won. But it lost its life in the winning. — Madeleine L'Engle

A winter ago I had an after-school seminar for high-school students and in one of the early sessions Una, a brilliant fifteen-year-old, a born writer who came to Harlem from Panama five years ago, and only then discovered the conflict between races, asked me, "Mrs. Franklin, do you really and truly believe in God with no doubts at all?"
"Oh, Una, I really and truly believe in God with all kinds of doubts."
But I base my life on this belief. — Madeleine L'Engle

Now wonder our youth is confused and in pain; they long for God, for the transcendent, and they are offered, far too often, either piosity or sociology, neither of which meets their needs, and they are introduced to churches which have become buildings that are a safe place to go to escape the awful demands of God. — Madeleine L'Engle

You don't know the meaning of moderation, do you, my darling? A happy medium is something I wonder if you'll ever learn. — Madeleine L'Engle

One of the most pusillanimous things we of the female sex have done throughout the centuries is to have allowed the male sex to assume that mankind is masculine. It is not. It takes both male and female to make the image of God. The proper understanding of mankind is that it is only a poor, broken thing if either male or female is excluded. — Madeleine L'Engle

Our children... have a passionate need for the dimension of transcendence, mysticism, way-outness. We're not offering it to them legitimately. The tendency of the churches to be relevant and more-secular-than-thou does not answer our need for the transcendent. As George Tyrrell wrote about a hundred years ago, "If a [man's] craving for the mysterious, the wonderful, the supernatural, be not fed on true religion, it will feed itself on the garbage of any superstition that is offered to it. — Madeleine L'Engle

An I Q cannot measure artistic ability. A potential Picasso may be a flop at objective vocabulary or number tests. An I Q does not measure a capacity for love ... How do we teach a child - our own, or those in a classroom to have compassion: to allow people to be different; to understand that like is not equal; to experiment; to laugh: to love. — Madeleine L'Engle

If we are not willing to fail we will never accomplish anything. All creative acts involve the risk of failure. — Madeleine L'Engle

When we believe in the impossible, it becomes possible, and we can do all kinds of extraordinary things. — Madeleine L'Engle

Language changes. If it does not change, like Latin it dies. But we need to be aware that as our language changes, so does our theology change, particularly if we are trying to manipulate language for a specific purpose. That is what is happening with our attempts at inclusive language, which thus far have been inconclusive and unsuccessful. — Madeleine L'Engle

Poets are born knowing the language of angels. — Madeleine L'Engle

I'm different,and I like being different."Calvin's voice was unnaturally loud.
"Maybe I don't like being different,"Meg said."but I don't want to be like everybody else,either. — Madeleine L'Engle

The primary needs can be filled without language. We can eat, sleep, make love, build a house, bear children, without language. But we cannot ask questions. We cannot ask, 'Who am I? Who are you? Why? — Madeleine L'Engle

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. — Madeleine L'Engle