Madeleine L'engle Quotes

To try to talk about art and about Christianity is for me one and the same thing, and it means attempting to share the meaning of my life, what gives it, for me, its tragedy and its glory.

~ Madeleine L'engle

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' For our sakes Jesus went through all the suffering we may ever have to endure, and because he cried out those words we may cry them out, too.

~ Madeleine L'engle

Basically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore 'religious.

~ Madeleine L'engle

Art is communication.

~ Madeleine L'engle

When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.

~ Madeleine L'engle

The figure in the icon is not meant to represent literally what Peter or John or any of the apostles looked like, or what Mary looked like, nor the child, Jesus. But, the orthodox painter feels, Jesus of Nazareth did not walk around Galilee faceless. The icon of Jesus may not look like the man Jesus two thousand years ago, but it represents some *quality* of Jesus, or his mother, or his followers, and so becomes an open window through which we can be given a new glimpse of the love of God.

~ Madeleine L'engle

What we are is going to be visible in our art, no matter how secular (on the surface) the subject may be.

~ Madeleine L'engle

When we are writing or painting or composing, we are, during the time of creativity, freed from normal restrictions and opened to a wider world, where colours are brighter, sounds clearer, and people more wondrously complex than we normally realize.

~ Madeleine L'engle

If the artist reflects only his own culture, then his works will die with that culture. But if his works reflect the eternal and universal, they will revive.

~ Madeleine L'engle

The writer does want to be published; the painter urgently hopes that someone will see the finished canvas (van Gogh was denied the satisfaction of having his work bought and appreciated during his lifetime; no wonder the pain was more than he could bear); the composer needs his music to be heard. Art is communication, and if there is no communication it is as though the work has been stillborn.

~ Madeleine L'engle

Stories, no matter how simple, can be vehicles of truth; can be, in fact, icons. It's no coincidence that Jesus taught almost entirely by telling stories, simple stories dealing with the stuff of life familiar to the Jews of his day. Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all art; to give a name to the cosmos we see despite all the chaos.

~ Madeleine L'engle

We don't want to feel less when we have finished a book, we want to feel that new possibilities of being have been opened to us. We don't want to close a book with a sense that life is totally unfair and that there is no light in the darkness, we want to feel that we have been given illumination.

~ Madeleine L'engle

There are forces working in the world as never before in the history of mankind for standardization, for the regimentation of us all, or what I like to call making muffins of us, muffins all like every other muffin in the muffin tin. This is the limited universe, the drying dissipating universe that we can help our children to avoid by providing them with ‘explosive material capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly'.

~ Madeleine L'engle

The author & the reader know each other: they meet on the bridge of words

~ Madeleine L'engle

Come t'e' picciol fallo amaro morso! Dante. What grievous pain a little fault doth give thee!

~ Madeleine L'engle

The artist cannot hold back; it is impossible, because writing, or any other discipline of art, involves participation in suffering, in the ills and the occasional stabbing joys that come from being part of the human drama.

~ Madeleine L'engle

Lords of fire and earth and water,Lords of moon and wind and sky,Come now to the Old Man's daughter,Come from fathers long gone by.Bring blue from a distance eye.Lords of water, earth, and fire,Lords of wind and snow and rain,Give to my heart's desire.Life as all life comes with pain,But blue will come to us again.

~ Madeleine L'engle

--So we reached our decisions simultaneously, and apart, and if I knew that Court was fighting a battle, did he, too, sense mine? Did it have anything to do with his coming back to life again? For he is here, I am no longer living with a marble image. And I will never know why. Court being Court I can never ask him why; we wrestled with our problems alone and we must live alone with the answers. And is it part of a marriage, part of being a human being, that we must always reach our decisions alone?

~ Madeleine L'engle

Charles Wallace and the unicorn moved through the time-spinning reaches of a far glazy, and he realized that the galaxy itself was part of a mighty orchestra, and each star and planet within the galaxy added its own instrument to the music of the spheres. As long as the ancient harmonies were sung, the universe would not entirely lose its joy.

~ Madeleine L'engle

Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point. French. Pascal. The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing.

~ Madeleine L'engle

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 graceBetween myself and the powers of darkness!

~ Madeleine L'engle

The well-intentioned mothers who don't want their children polluted by fairy tales would not only deny them their childhood, with its high creativity, but they would have them conform to the secular world, with its dirty devices. The world of fairy tale, fantasy, myth, is inimical to the secular world, and in total opposition to it, for it is interested not in limited laboratory proofs but in truth.

~ Madeleine L'engle

Growing up is a process that never ends. It isn't a point you attain so you can say, Hooray, I'm grown up. Some people never grow up. And nobody ever finishes growing. Or shouldn't. If you stop you might as well quit. What I have to tell you is that it never gets any easier. It goes right on being rough forever. But nothing that's easy is worth anything. You ought to have learned that by now. What happens as you keep on growing is that all of a sudden you realize that it's more exciting and beautiful than scary and awful.

~ Madeleine L'engle

In so-called primitive societies there are two words for power, mana and taboo: the power which creates and the power which destroys; the power which is benign and the power which is malign. Odd that we have retained in our vocabulary the word for dangerous power, taboo, and have lost mana.

~ Madeleine L'engle

The story comes, and it is pure story. That's all I set out to write. But I don't believe that we can write any kind of story without including, whether we intend to or not, our response to the world around us.

~ Madeleine L'engle

Lords of spirit, Lords of breath,Lords of fireflies, stars, and light,Who will keep the world from death?Who will stop the coming night?Blue eyes, blue eyes, have the sight.

~ Madeleine L'engle

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

~ Madeleine L'engle

She was enfolded in the great wings of Mrs. Whatsit and she felt comfort and strength pouring through her. Mrs. Whatsit was not speaking aloud, and yet through the wings Meg understood words.My child, do not despair. Do you think we would have brought you here if there was no hope? We are asking you to do a difficult thing, but we are confident that you can do it. Your father needs help, he needs courage, and for his children he may be able to do what he cannot do for himself.

~ Madeleine L'engle

But what is real? In the Bible we are constantly being given glimpses of a reality quite different from that taught in school, even in Sunday school. And these glimpses are not given to the qualified; there's the marvel. It may be that the qualified feel no need of them.

~ Madeleine L'engle

Today we live in a society that seems to be less and less concerned with reality. We drink instant coffee and reconstituted orange juice. We buy our vegetables on cardboard trays covered with plastic. But perhaps the most dehumanizing thing of all is that we have allowed the media to call us consumers--ugly. No! I don't want to be a consumer. Anger consumes. Forest fires consume. Cancer consumes.

~ Madeleine L'engle

He knew what she wanted, and he wanted it, too; he was ready, but not, despite her gorgeousness, with Tiglah. Tiglah was not worth losing his ability to touch a unicorn.

~ Madeleine L'engle

One thing I have discovered since I've been ill, though, is that nobody ever knows anybody, and maybe least of all the people who are closest to them. Sort of a business of not being able to see the trees for the woods. We all live in isolated prisons of our own bodies and there's no real contact with any other human being. That's what sex is, in a way, isn't it, a desperate striving for contact? With which cheerful Thought for Today, I will bid you good afternoon.

~ Madeleine L'engle

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

~ Madeleine L'engle

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

~ Madeleine L'engle

The best way to guide children without coercion is to be ourselves.

~ Madeleine L'engle

If it's not good enough for adults, it's not good enough for children. If a book that is going to be marketed for children does not interest me, a grownup, then I am dishonoring the children for whom the book is intended, and I am dishonoring books. And words.

~ Madeleine L'engle

Our children... have a passionate need for the dimension of transcendence, mysticism, way-outness. We're not offering it to them legitimately. The tendency of the churches to be relevant and more-secular-than-thou does not answer our need for the transcendent. As George Tyrrell wrote about a hundred years ago, If a [man's] craving for the mysterious, the wonderful, the supernatural, be not fed on true religion, it will feed itself on the garbage of any superstition that is offered to it.

~ Madeleine L'engle

The child is aware of unlimited potential, and this munificence is one of the joys of creativity.Those of use who struggle in our own ways, small or great, trickles or rivers, to create, are constantly having to unlearn what the world would teach us...

~ Madeleine L'engle

I believe that every one of us here tonight has as clear and vital a vocation as anyone in a religiousorder. We have the vocation of keeping alive Mr. Melcher's excitement in leading young peopleinto an expanding imagination. Because of the very nature of the world as it is today our childrenreceive in school a heavy load of scientific and analytic subjects, so it is in their reading for fun,for pleasure, that they must be guided into creativity. These are forces working in the world asnever before in the history of mankind for standardization, for the regimentation of us all, orwhat I like to call making muffins of us, muffins all like every other muffin in the muffin tin.This is the limited universe, the drying, dissipating universe, that we can help our children avoidby providing them with “explosive material capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly.

~ Madeleine L'engle

I am encouraged as I look at some of those who have listened to their different drum: Einstein was hopeless at school math and commented wryly on his inadequacy in human relations. Winston Churchill was an abysmal failure in his early school years. Byron, that revolutionary student, had to compensate for a club foot; Demosthenes for a stutter; and Homer was blind. Socrates couldn't manage his wife, and infuriated his countrymen. And what about Jesus, if we need an ultimate example of failure with one's peers? Or an ultimate example of love?

~ Madeleine L'engle