Madeleine L'Engle

"Why does anybody do anything" Mimi asked impatiently. "Most of the time we don't know--any of us."

"Listen, she said, "cherubim have come to my planet before."I know that. Where do you think I got my information"What do you know about us"I have heard that your host planet is shadowed, that it is troubled."It is beautiful," Meg said defensively. She felt a rippling of his wings. "In the middle of your cities"Well-no-but I don't live in a city."And is your planet peaceful"Well-no-it isn't very peaceful."I had the idea," Proginoskes moved reluctantly within her mind, "that there are wars on your planet. People fighting and killing each other."Yes, that's so, but-"And children go hungry."Yes."And people don't understand each other."Not always."And there's-there's hate"Yes."She felt Proginoskes pulling away. "All I want to do," he was murmuring to himself, "is go some place quiet and recite the names of the stars..."

"Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist."

"We, and I think I'm speaking for many writers, don't know what it is that sometimes comes to make our books alive. All we can do is write dutifully and day after day, every day, giving our work the very best of what we are capable. I don't that we can consciously put the magic in; it doesn't work that way. When the magic comes, it's a gift."

"“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.”"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Story always tells us more than the mere words, and that is why we love to write it, and to read it."

"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."

"I believe that every one of us here tonight has as clear and vital a vocation as anyone in a religiousorder. We have the vocation of keeping alive Mr. Melcher's excitement in leading young peopleinto an expanding imagination. Because of the very nature of the world as it is today our childrenreceive in school a heavy load of scientific and analytic subjects, so it is in their reading for fun,for pleasure, that they must be guided into creativity. These are forces working in the world asnever before in the history of mankind for standardization, for the regimentation of us all, orwhat 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 avoidby providing them with “explosive material capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly."

"An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy."

"One thing I have discovered since I've been ill, though, is that nobody ever knows anybody, and maybe least of all the people who are closest to them. Sort of a business of not being able to see the trees for the woods. We all live in isolated prisons of our own bodies and there's no real contact with any other human being. That's what sex is, in a way, isn't it, a desperate striving for contact? With which cheerful Thought for Today, I will bid you good afternoon."

"Today we live in a society that seems to be less and less concerned with reality. We drink instant coffee and reconstituted orange juice. We buy our vegetables on cardboard trays covered with plastic. But perhaps the most dehumanizing thing of all is that we have allowed the media to call us consumers--ugly. No! I don't want to be a consumer. Anger consumes. Forest fires consume. Cancer consumes."

"We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are."

"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."

"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."

"You don't want him for a reason. You want him because he's your father."