Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.

In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there's no danger that we will confuse God's work with our own, or God's glory with our own.

A book, too, can be a star, “explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,” a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.

A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.

Language is often changed by writers. We speak English today because Chaucer chose to write in the language of the common people, rather than the Latin or French used by those who were educated. James Joyce had an almost equally profound effect on language when he wrote about the inner self, rather than the outer self.

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.

Hate hurts the hater more'n the hated.

It isn't always the middle-aged who refuse to listen, who will not even try to understand another point of view. One boy would not get it through his head that for all adults God is not an old man in a white beard sitting on a cloud. As far as this boy was concerned, this old gentleman was the adult's god, and therefore he did not believe in God.

I don't want to dump on TV, but there's no doubt that our language has been changed by television, especially by the media, which tries to manipulate us into being consumers. Most of the time nowadays we human beings are referred to as consumers. What does the consumer think? What does the consumer want? How ugly. Forest fires consume. Cancer consumes. I want us to be nourishers. To be a librarian, particularly a librarian for young adults, is to be a nourisher, to share stories, offer books full of new ideas. We live in a world which has changed radically in the last half century, and story helps us to understand and live creatively with change. The changes are not going to stop. They are going to continue and accelerate. Like it or not.

One day back in the fifties my father and I were watching a program on our black and white TV which included an interview with an elderly man who answered one question by remarking, "Just because there's snow on the roof doesn't mean the fire's gone out in the furnace." The screen went black as the program went off the air, and we heard the announcer say, "There will be a brief interlude of organ music." Certainly that mild quip of the elderly man wouldn't shock anybody today. We might laugh appreciatively at his wit, but that would be the extent of our reaction. The change in point of view has been equally radical in the world of books. Somehow or other I've never gotten around to reading Lady Chatterly's Lover, but I doubt if it would shock me.

Kids don't hesitate to ask questions. And it's a great honor to have the kids say, "Your books have made me trust you."

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

The truth of a story is what the novelist strives for, and quite often the writer is taken down strange and unexpected paths on this search.

In Kenneth Grahame's beautiful book, The Wind In The Willows, Mole and Rat go to the holy island of the great god, Pan. It is a superb piece of religious writing, but because it has gone beyond fact, it is deeply upsetting and untruthful to some people. If a story is not specified as being Christian, it is not Christian. But that is not so. I think that this scene is upsetting because it calls us beyond fact into the vast world of imagination, and imagination is a word of many dimensions.

The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly.