Quotes by Madeleine L'Engle

Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature. To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take…If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation…It takes a lifetime to learn another person…When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected.

If I do wrong, I may do it unwittingly, thinking I am doing something for the best; but if it turns out to be wrong, I have done it, and I must bear the responsibility. It is not somebody else’s or something else’s fault. If it is I am less than human. Like everybody else, I tend to rationalize and alibi, before I let myself admit, “Yes, I did this. I am sorry. I will do what I can to make reparation.” Our sins defeat us unless we are willing to recognize them, confess them, and become healed and whole and holy—not qualified, mind you; just holy.

She knew that the freedom was in herself, just as the prison had been.

Freedom is a terrible gift, and the theory behind all dictatorships is that the people do no want freedom.

Two people whose opinion I respect told me that the word Christian would turn people off. This certainly says something about the state of Christianity today. I wouldnt mind if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it is; I wouldnt mind if, when a group of Christians meet for bread and wine, we might well be interrupted and jailed for subversive activities; I wouldnt mind if, once again, we were being thrown to the lions. I do mind, desperately, that the word Christian means for so many people smugness, and piosity, and holier-than-thouness. Who today can recognize a Christian because of how those Christians love one another?

In the literary world today, Christianity has pretty well replaced sex as the present pet taboo, not only because Christianity is so often distorted by Christians as well as non-Christians, but because it is too wild and free for the timid.

To try to talk about art and about Christianity is for me one and the same thing, and it means attempting to share the meaning of my life, what gives it, for me, its tragedy and its glory.

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 necessarily a conscious one, and not everyone has the humble, courageous obedience of Mary.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? For our sakes Jesus went through all the suffering we may ever have to endure, and because he cried out those words we may cry them out, too.

Basically there can be no categories such as religious art and secular art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore religious.

Art is communication.

When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.

The figure in the icon is not meant to represent literally what Peter or John or any of the apostles looked like, or what Mary looked like, nor the child, Jesus. But, the orthodox painter feels, Jesus of Nazareth did not walk around Galilee faceless. The icon of Jesus may not look like the man Jesus two thousand years ago, but it represents some *quality* of Jesus, or his mother, or his followers, and so becomes an open window through which we can be given a new glimpse of the love of God.

What we are is going to be visible in our art, no matter how secular (on the surface) the subject may be.

When we are writing or painting or composing, we are, during the time of creativity, freed from normal restrictions and opened to a wider world, where colours are brighter, sounds clearer, and people more wondrously complex than we normally realize.

If the artist reflects only his own culture, then his works will die with that culture. But if his works reflect the eternal and universal, they will revive.

The writer does want to be published; the painter urgently hopes that someone will see the finished canvas (van Gogh was denied the satisfaction of having his work bought and appreciated during his lifetime; no wonder the pain was more than he could bear); the composer needs his music to be heard. Art is communication, and if there is no communication it is as though the work has been stillborn.

Stories, no matter how simple, can be vehicles of truth; can be, in fact, icons. Its no coincidence that Jesus taught almost entirely by telling stories, simple stories dealing with the stuff of life familiar to the Jews of his day. Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos we see despite all the chaos.

In reading we must become creators.

There are forces working in the world as never before in the history of mankind for standardization, for the regimentation of us all, or what I like to call making muffins of us, muffins all like every other muffin in the muffin tin. This is the limited universe, the drying dissipating universe that we can help our children to avoid by providing them with ‘explosive material capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly.