Lords of spirit, Lords of breath,Lords of fireflies, stars, and light,Who will keep the world from death?Who will stop the coming night?Blue eyes, blue eyes, have the sight. - Madeleine L'Engle
If we aren't capable of being hurt we aren't capable of feeling joy. - Madeleine L'Engle
If my religion is true, it will stand up to all my questioning; there is no need to fear. - Madeleine L'Engle
The novel we sit down to write, and the one we end up writing may be very different, just as the Jesus we grasp and the Jesus who grasps us may also differ. - Madeleine L'Engle
We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually. - Madeleine L'Engle
In reading we must become creators. - Madeleine L'Engle
A book, too, can be a star 'explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly. - Madeleine L'Engle
If it can be verified, we don't need faith... Faith is for that which lies on the other side of reason. Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys. - Madeleine L'Engle
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. - Madeleine L'Engle
Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else. - Madeleine L'Engle
People are afraid of knowledge that is not yet theirs. - Madeleine L'Engle
The story comes, and it is pure story. That's all I set out to write. But I don't believe that we can write any kind of story without including, whether we intend to or not, our response to the world around us. - Madeleine L'Engle
Why does anybody do anything?" Mimi asked impatiently. "Most of the time we don't know--any of us. - Madeleine L'Engle
An artist is someone who cannot rest, who can never rest as long as there is one suffering creature in this world. - Madeleine L'Engle
The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been. - Madeleine L'Engle
Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving. - Madeleine L'Engle
In my dreams, I never have an age. - Madeleine L'Engle
The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain. - Madeleine L'Engle
That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along. - Madeleine L'Engle
When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable. - Madeleine L'Engle
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. - Madeleine L'Engle
If it's bad art, it's bad religion, no matter how pious the subject. - Madeleine L'Engle
Hate hurts the hater more'n the hated. - Madeleine L'Engle
And we mustn't lose our sense of humor," Mrs. Which said. "The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly. - Madeleine L'Engle
we’re all a grab bag of good and eveil, and by and large can’t tell which is which - Madeleine L'Engle
Prayer was never meant to be magic,' Mother said.'Then why bother with it?' Suzy scowled.'Because it's an act of love,' Mother said. - Madeleine L'Engle
A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe. - Madeleine L'Engle
We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it. - Madeleine L'Engle
An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy. - Madeleine L'Engle
Truth is eternal, knowledge is changeable. It is disastrous to confuse them. - Madeleine L'Engle
We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are. - 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
Because to take away a man's 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. - Madeleine L'Engle
You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children. - Madeleine L'Engle
A life lived in chaos is an impossibility... - Madeleine L'Engle
Alleluia! We do not have to be right! We do have to love, to be vulnerable, to accept joy and pain, and to grow through them. - Madeleine L'Engle
Human beings are the only creatures who are allowed to fail. If an ant fails, it's dead. But we're allowed to learn from our mistakes and from our failures. And that's how I learn, by falling flat on my face and picking myself up and starting all over again. - Madeleine L'Engle
A book comes and says, 'Write me. - 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
Story always tells us more than the mere words, and that is why we love to write it, and to read it. - Madeleine L'Engle
It's not my brain that's writing the book, it's these hands of mine. - 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
I do not think that I will ever reach a stage when I will say, "This is what I believe. Finished." What I believe is alive ... and open to growth - Madeleine L'Engle
I suspect that in every good marriage there are times when love seems to be over. Sometimes these desert lines are simply the only way to the next oasis, which is far more lush and beautiful after the desert crossing than it could possibly have been without it. - Madeleine L'Engle
We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts. - Madeleine L'Engle
So we must daily keep things wound: that is, we must pray when prayer seems dry as dust; we must write when we are physically tired, when our hearts are heavy, when our bodies are in pain. - Madeleine L'Engle
Sometimes our freedom comes in the way we accept things over which we have no control, things which may cause us great pain and even death. - Madeleine L'Engle
Maybe you have to know darkness before you can appreciate the light. - Madeleine L'engle
It takes too much energy to be against something unless it's really important. - Madeleine L'Engle
They've 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. - Madeleine L'Engle
You don't want him for a reason. You want him because he's your father. - Madeleine L'Engle
Inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it. - Madeleine L'Engle
Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist. - Madeleine L'Engle
All will be redeemed in God's fullness of time, all, not just the small portion of the population who have been given the grace to know and accept Christ. All the strayed and stolen sheep. All the little lost ones. - Madeleine L'Engle
Death is contagious; it is contracted the moment we are conceived. - Madeleine L'Engle
Basically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore 'religious. - Madeleine L'Engle
Life is not easy and comfortable, with nothing ever going wrong as long as you buy the right product. It's not true that if you have the right insurance everything is going to be fine. That's not what it's really like. Terrible things happen. And those are the things we learn from. - Madeleine L'Engle
Some things have to be believed to be seen. - Madeleine L'Engle