One of our children when he was two or three years old used to rush at me when he had been naughty, and beat against me, and what he wanted by this m… - Madeleine L'Engle

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.

When a child who has been conceived in love is born to a man and a woman, the joy of that birth sings throughout the universe. The joy of writing or painting is much the same, and the insemination comes not from the artist himself but from his relationship with those he loves, with the whole world. All real art is, in its true sense, religious; it is a religious impulse; there is not such thing as a non-religious subject.