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Madeleine LEngle Quotes about Writing

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Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.

Madeleine L'Engle
Writing, World, Paint

I think that all artists, regardless of degree of talent, are a painful, paradoxical combination of certainty and uncertainty, of arrogance and humility, constantly in need of reassurance, and yet with a stubborn streak of faith in their own validity no matter what.

Madeleine L'Engle
Writing, Humility, Artist
"A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals, Book 1)". Book by Madeleine L'Engle, 1971.

When the artist is truly the servant of the work, the work is better than the artist; Shakespeare knew how to listen to his work, and so he often wrote better than he could write; Bach composed more deeply, more truly than he knew, Rembrandt's brush put more of the human spirit on canvas than Rembrandt could comprehend. 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.

Madeleine L'Engle
Writing, Artist, Way

My writing knows more than I know. What a writer must do is listen to her book. It might take you where you don’t expect to go. That’s what happens when you write stories. You listen and you say ‘a ha,’ and you write it down. A lot of it is not planned, not conscious; it happens while you’re doing it. You know more about it after you’re done.

Madeleine L'Engle
Book, Writing, Stories

When I have something to say that I think will be too difficult for adults, I write it in a book for children. Children are excited by new ideas; they have not yet closed the doors and windows of their imaginations. Provided the story is good... nothing is too difficult for children.

Madeleine L'Engle
Children, Book, Writing

Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. - Mrs. Whatsit

Madeleine L'Engle
Writing, Form, Given
FaceBook post by Madeleine L'Engle from Apr 23, 2016

Poetry, at least the kind I write, is written out of immediate need; it is written out of pain, joy, and experience too great to be borne until it is ordered into words. And then it is written to be shared.

Madeleine L'Engle
Pain, Writing, Joy
"The Ordering of Love: The New and Collected Poems of Madeleine L'Engle". Book by Madeleine L'Engle, 2005.

We find what we are looking for. If we are looking for life and love and openness and growth, we are likely to find them. If we are looking for witchcraft and evil, we'll likely find them, and we may get taken over by them.

Madeleine L'Engle
Life And Love, Taken, Writing
Madeleine L'Engle, Library of Congress (1984). “Dare to be Creative!: A Lecture Presented at the Library of Congress, November 16, 1983”, Washington : Library of Congress

You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it? Yes. Mrs. Whatsit said. You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.

Madeleine L'Engle
Writing, Mean, Up To You
Madeleine L'Engle (2013). “The Wrinkle in Time Quintet”, p.87, Macmillan

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
Children, Book, Writing
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.123, 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

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

It is all, as usual, paradox. I have to use what intellect I have in order to write books, but I write the kind of books I do in order that I may try to set down glimpses of things that are on the other side of the intellect. We do not go around and discard the intellect, but we must go through and beyond it.

Madeleine L'Engle
Book, Writing, Order
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.32, Open Road Media

If our lives are truly "hid with Christ in God," the astounding thing is that this hiddenness is revealed in all that we do and say and write. What we are is going to be visible in our art, no matter how secular (on the surface) the subject may be.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Writing, May
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.102, Convergent Books

If I have something I want to say that is too difficult for adults to swallow, then I will write it in a book for children.

Madeleine L'Engle
Children, Book, Writing
Twitter post from Jun 11, 2012

Stories have a richness that goes way beyond fact. My writing knows more than I know. What a writer must do is listen to her book. It might take you where you don't expect to go.

Madeleine L'Engle
Book, Writing, Stories

With each book I write, I become more and more convinced that the books have a life of their own, quite apart from me.

Madeleine L'Engle
Book, Writing, Convinced
Twitter post from Dec 01, 2016

If you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair.

Madeleine L'Engle
Writing, Thinking, Want
"Penguins and Golden Calves: Icons and Idols in Antarctica and Other Unexpected Places". Book by Madeleine L'Engle, 1996.

During the long drag of years before our youngest child went to school, my love for my family and my need to write were in acute conflict. The problem was really that I put two things first. My husband and children came first. So did my writing. Bump.

Madeleine L'Engle
Husband, Children, Writing
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “A Circle of Quiet”, p.14, Open Road Media

If you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you.

Madeleine L'Engle
Writing, Needs, Want
Twitter post from May 01, 2016

Inspiration does not always precede the act of writing; it often follows it.

Madeleine L'Engle
Inspiration, Writing, Doe
Twitter post from Nov 15, 2011

I am convinced that each work of art, be it a great work of genius or something very small, has its own life, and it will come to the artist, the composer or the writer or the painter, and say, "Here I am: compose me; or write me; or paint me"; and the job of the artist is to serve the work.

Madeleine L'Engle
Art, Jobs, Writing
Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “The Irrational Season”, p.106, Open Road Media

I know writers who write only when inspiration comes. How would Isaac Stern play if he played the violin only when he felt like it? He would be lousy.

Madeleine L'Engle
Inspiration, Writing, Play

To write for children at all is an act of faith.

Madeleine L'Engle
Children, Writing, Literature

You learn to write by doing it.

Madeleine L'Engle
Writing

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