Quotes by Madeleine L'Engle

One cannot be humble and aware of oneself at the same time.

I do not believe that true optimism can come about except through tragedy.

All right, all right, you go right on thinking you an act of God created in his image, and I’ll go right on thinking I’m descended from an ape. When you look in the mirror I should think you’d feel pretty discouraged; I wouldn’t be happy to look at myself and think that my faces is an Imago Dei. It wouldn’t make me feel I’d done very well by God. But when I look in the mirror and that I’m descended from an ape, I feel I’ve done remarkably well.

Maybe thats the best part of going away for a vacation-coming home again.

If we all knew each morning that there was going to be another morning, and on and on and on, wes tend not to notice the sunrise, or hear the birds, or the waves rolling into the shore. Wed 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 its even more intense when we know that the termination of the body is near, but it shouldnt be.

Because to take away a mans freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person.

Charles Wallace, the danger here is greatest for you. Why?Because of what you are. Just exactly because of what you are you will be by far the most vulnerable. You must stay with Meg and Calvin. You must not go off on your own. Beware of pride and arrogance, Charles, for they may betray you.

There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation.

Its idiotic, its crazy. If you die and then youre just nothing, there isnt any point to anything. Why do we live at all if we die and stop being? Father wasnt ready to be stopped. No ones ready to be stopped. We dont have *time* to be ready to be stopped. Its all crazy. . . . Look at my glasses. I cant even see that there are any stars in the sky without them, but its not the glasses that are doing the seeing, its me, Madeleine. I dont think Fathers eyes are seeing now, but *he* is. And maybe his brain isnt thinking, but a brains just something to think through, the way my glasses are something to see through.

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 Im with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grown-up, then I dont ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a childs awareness and joy, and *be* fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup.

Theyve never known a time when people drank rain water because it was pure, or could eat snow, or swim in any river or brook. The last time I drove to Washington the traffic was so bad that I could have made better time with a horse.

It was still twilight when they reached the flat rock. They sat, and the stone still held the warmth of the days sun. At first there were only occasional sparkles, but as it got darker Chuck was lost in a daze pf delight as a galaxy of fireflies twinkled on and off, flinging upward in a blaze of light, dropping earthward like falling stars, moving in contiuous effervescent dance.

If Im confused, or upset, or angry, if I can go out and look at the stars Ill almost always get back a sense of proportion. Its not that they make me feel insignificant; its the very opposite; they make me feel that everything matters, be it ever so small, and that theres meaning to life even when it seems most meaningless.

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.

I didnt mean to tell you, Mrs. Whatsit faltered. I didnt mean ever to let you know. But oh, my dears, I did so love being a star! Yyouu are sstill verry yyoungg, Mrs Witch said, her voice faintly chiding. The Medium sat looking happily at the star-filled sky in her ball, smiling, and nodding and chuckling gently. But Meg noticed that her eyes were drooping, and suddenly her head fell forward and she gave a faint snore.Poor thing, Mrs Whatsit said, weve worn her out. Its very hard work for her.

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.

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 Name you Echthroi. I Name you Meg.I Name you Calvin.I Name you Mr. Jenkins.I Name you Proginoskes.I fill you with Naming.Be!Be, butterfly and behemoth,be galaxy and grasshopper,star and sparrow,you matter,you are,be!Be caterpillar and comet,Be porcupine and planet,sea sand and solar system,sing with us,dance with us,rejoice with us,for the glory of creation,seagulls and seraphimangle worms and angel host,chrysanthemum and cherubim.(O cherubim.)Be!Sing for the gloryof the living and the lovingthe flaming of creationsing with usdance with usbe with us.Be!- Madeleine LEngle, A Wind in the Door

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 Pedrotis lumpy bed, that if I love Courtney that is the last thing I must do. If I love Courtney he must never know.

As long as we know what its 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.