Madeleine L'Engle citations

Page 4

“We turn to stories and pictures and music because they show us who and what and why we are.”

“A good laugh heals a lot of hurts.”

“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”

“Experiment is the mother of knowledge.”

“Maybe that's the best part of going away for a vacation-coming home again.”

“Euripedes. Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything.”

“It takes too much energy to be against something unless it's really important.”

“I don't understand it any more than you do, but one thing I've learned is that you don't have to understand things for them to be.”

“Stories are like children. They grow in their own way.”

“We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually.”

“We do learn and develop when we are exposed to those who are greater than we are. Perhaps this is the chief way we mature.”

“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.”

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

“In reading we must become creators.”

“It is possible to suffer and despair an entire lifetime and still not give up the art of laughter.”

“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.”

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

“On the other side of pain, there is still love.”

“Have you ever tried to get to your feet with a sprained dignity?”

“It was a dark and stormy night.”

“Meg, don't you think you'd make a better adjustment to life if you faced facts?"
I do face facts," Meg said.
They're lots easier to face than people, I can tell you.”

“Anger is not bitterness. Bitterness can go on eating at a man's heart and mind forever. Anger spends itself in its own time.”

“If I sit for a while, then my impatience, crossness, frustration, are indeed annihilated, and my sense of humor returns.”

“Love. That was what she had that IT did not have.”

“But my memories are like a fire in winter—whenever I'm cold I can warm my hands at them.

—Ditta”

“God understands that part of us which is more than what we think we are.”

“It's not my brain that's writing the book, it's these hands of mine.”

“Wild nights are my glory!”

“Art is communication.”