Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.

Don't try to comprehend with your mind. Your minds are very limited. Use your intuition.

Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.

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.

I do not know everything; still many things I understand.

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

Hate hurts the hater more'n the hated.

Love of music, of sunsets and sea; a liking for the same kind of people; political opinions that are not radically divergent; a similar stance as we look at the stars and think of the marvelous strangeness of the universe - these are what build a marriage. And it is never to be taken for granted.

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.

Like and equal are not the same thing at all.

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

At Tara in this fateful hour,
I place all Heaven with its power,
And the sun with its brightness,
And the snow with its whiteness,
And the fire with all the strength it hath,
And the lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along their path,
And the sea with its deepness,
And the rocks with their steepness,
And the earth with its starkness:
All these I place,
By God's almighty help and grace
Between myself and the powers of darkness!

People are more than just the way they look.

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.

Henneberger: If the Bible is not literally true, does that mean we don’t need to take it seriously? L'Engle: Oh no, you do, because it’s truth, not fact, and you have to take truth seriously even when it expands beyond the facts.