The Crosswicks Journal, The Irrational Season (1977)
Context: If our love for each other really is participatory, then all other human relationships nourish it; it is inclusive, never exclusive. If a friendship makes me love Hugh more, then I can trust that friendship. If it thrusts itself between us, then it should be cut out, and quickly.
Madeleine L'Engle: 223 quotes5 likes
Madeleine L'Engle Quotes
Section 1.9 <!-- p. 28 -->
The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)
Context: My husband is my most ruthless critic. … Sometimes he will say, "It's been said better before." Of course. It's all been said better before. If I thought I had to say it better than anyone else, I'd never start. Better or worse is immaterial. The thing is that it has to be said; by me; ontologically. We each have to say it, to say it in our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn't what human creation is about. It is that we have to try; to put it down in pigment, or words, or musical notations, or we die.
“I do not know everything; still many things I understand.”
Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time
Source: A Wrinkle in Time
“The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly.”
Source: A Wrinkle in Time: With Related Readings
“Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.”
The Summer of the Great-Grandmother (1974), p. 143
“People are more than just the way they look.”
Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time
Source: A Wrinkle in Time
“A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.”
Source: A Wrinkle in Time: With Related Readings
“If you aren't unhappy sometimes you don't know how to be happy.”
Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time
Source: A Wrinkle in Time
“Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind.”
Source: Swiftly Tilting Planet
Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time
Variant: We look not at the things which are what you would call seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal. But the things which are not seen are eternal.
Source: A Wrinkle in Time
“Qui plussait, plus se tait. French, you know. The more a man knows, the less he talks.”
Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time
Source: A Wrinkle in Time
“A good laugh heals a lot of hurts.”
Madeleine L'Engle A Ring of Endless Light
Source: A Ring of Endless Light
“Experiment is the mother of knowledge.”
Source: A Wrinkle in Time: With Related Readings
“Maybe that's the best part of going away for a vacation-coming home again.”
Madeleine L'Engle book Meet the Austins
Source: Meet the Austins
“Euripedes. Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything.”
Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time
Source: A Wrinkle in Time
“Stories are like children. They grow in their own way.”
Madeleine L'Engle A Swiftly Tilting Planet
Source: A Swiftly Tilting Planet
Source: Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage
Section 1.10 <!-- p. 30 -->
The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)
Context: Here we are living in a world of "identity crises," and most of us have no idea what an identity is.
Half the problem is that an identity is something which must be understood intuitively, rather than in terms of provable fact. An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy.