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Madeleine LEngle Quotes - Page 9

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The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly.

The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly.

Madeleine L'Engle
Trying, Littles, Way

The deeper and richer a personality is, the more full it is of paradox and contradiction. It is only a shallow character who offers us no problems of contrast.

Madeleine L'Engle
Character, Personality, Problem
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “A Circle of Quiet”, p.21, Open Road Media

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
Silence, Way, Vibrations
Madeleine L'Engle (2013). “A Wrinkle in Time Trilogy”, p.38, Macmillan

I would like to travel light on this journey of life, to get rid of the encumbrances I acquire each day. . . . The most difficult thing to let go is my self, that self which, coddled and cozened, becomes smaller as it becomes heavier. I don't understand how and why I come to be only as I lose myself, but I know from long experience that this is so.

Madeleine L'Engle
Letting Go, Journey, Light

Artists of all disciplines must be willing to go into the dark, let go control, be surprised.

Madeleine L'Engle
Letting Go, Dark, Artist

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.

Madeleine L'Engle
Matter, Painful, Difficult
Madeleine L'Engle (2007). “An Acceptable Time”, p.224, Macmillan

She always had to have someone to love...She couldn't seem to believe that anyone could really love her. She always thought it was because she was a star, not just because of her herself, and she always had to be reassured.

Madeleine L'Engle
Stars, Believe, Seems
Madeleine L'Engle (2008). “The Joys of Love”, p.115, Macmillan

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.

Madeleine L'Engle
Summer, Morning, Book
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “The Summer of the Great-Grandmother”, p.33, Open Road Media

It might be a good idea if, like the White Queen, we practiced believing six impossible things every morning before breakfast, for we are called on to believe what to many people is impossible. Instead of rejoicing in this glorious "impossible" which gives meaning and dignity to our lives, we try to domesticate God, to make his might actions comprehensible to our finite minds.

Madeleine L'Engle
Morning, Queens, Believe
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.69, Convergent Books

Holiness ... is nothing we can *do* ... It is gift, sheer gift, waiting there to be recognized and received. We do not have to be qualified to be holy. We do not have to be qualified to be whole, or healed.Made

Madeleine L'Engle
Waiting, Holiness, Holy

If it's not good enough for adults, it's not good enough for children. If a book that is going to be marketed for children does not interest me, a grownup, then I am dishonoring the children for whom the book is intended, and I am dishonoring books. And words.

Madeleine L'Engle
Children, Book, Not Good Enough
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “A Circle of Quiet”, p.119, Open Road Media

The prayer of words cannot be eliminated. And I must pray them daily, whether I feel like praying or not. Otherwise, when God as something to say to me, I will not know how to listen. Until I have worked through self, I will not be enabled to get out of the way.

Madeleine L'Engle
Prayer, Self, Way
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.23, Convergent Books

It's a strange thing, how you can love somebody, how you can be all eaten up inside with needing them--and they simply don't need you. That's all there is to it, and neither of you can do anything about it. And they'll be the same way with someone else, and someone else will be the same way about you and it goes on and on--this desperate need--and only once in a rare million do the same two people need each other.

Madeleine L'Engle
Two, People, Needs
Madeleine L'Engle (1968). “Prelude”

She seems to have had the ability to stand firmly on the rock of her past while living completely and unregretfully in the present.

Madeleine L'Engle
Grandma, Past, Rocks
Madeleine L'Engle (2017). “The Crosswicks Journals: A Circle of Quiet, The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, The Irrational Season, and Two-Part Invention”, p.259, Open Road Media

I got so discouraged, I almost stopped writing. It was my 12-year-old son who changed my mind when he said to me, "Mother, you've been very cross and edgy with us and we notice you haven't been writing. We wish you'd go back to the typewriter. That did a lot of good for my false guilts about spending so much time writing. At that point, I acknowledged that I am a writer and even if I were never published again, that's what I am."

Madeleine L'Engle
Mother, Writing, Son

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?

Madeleine L'Engle
Daughter, Thinking, People
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “The Summer of the Great-Grandmother”, p.84, Open Road Media

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

Madeleine L'Engle
Writing, Creativity, Color
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.84, Convergent Books

If our love for each other really is participatory, then all other human relationships nourish it; it is inclusive, never exclusive.

Madeleine L'Engle
Our Love, Humans, Human Relations
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “The Irrational Season”, p.46, Open Road Media

It seemed to travel with her, to sweep her aloft in the power of song, so that she was moving in glory among the stars, and for a moment she, too, felt that the words Darkness and Light had no meaning, and only this melody was real.

Madeleine L'Engle
Song, Stars, Real
Madeleine L'Engle (2013). “A Wrinkle in Time Trilogy”, p.100, Macmillan

There was no light. The darkness was deep and there was no dazzle.

Madeleine L'Engle
Light, Darkness, Dazzle
Madeleine L'Engle (1980). “A Ring of Endless Light”, Laurel Leaf

Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing had vanished, and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure.

Madeleine L'Engle
Stars, Dark, Light
Madeleine L'Engle (2010). “A Wrinkle in Time”, p.102, Macmillan

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
Children, Hero, Men
Madeleine L'Engle (2017). “The Crosswicks Journals: A Circle of Quiet, The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, The Irrational Season, and Two-Part Invention”, p.113, Open Road Media

And sometimes when we listen, we are led into places we do not expect, into adventures we do not always understand.

Madeleine L'Engle
Adventure, Sometimes
Madeleine L'Engle, Luci Shaw (2004). “WinterSong: Christmas Readings”, p.51, Regent College Publishing

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."

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Believe, Here I Am
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.18, Convergent Books

We do not know and cannot tell when the spirit is with us. Great talent or small, it makes no difference. We are caught within our own skins, our own sensibilities; we never know if our technique has been adequate to the vision.

Madeleine L'Engle
Artist, Differences, Vision
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “The Irrational Season”, p.195, Open Road Media

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