Madeleine L'Engle

Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. - Mrs. Whatsit

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

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.

When we lose our myths we lose our place in the universe.

If it's bad art, it's bad religion, no matter how pious the subject.

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

Like and equal are two entirely different things.

All children are artists, and it is an indictment of our culture that so many of them lose their creativity, their unfettered imaginations, as they grow older.

We find what we are looking for. If we are looking for life and love and openness and growth, we are likely to find them. If we are looking for witchcraft and evil, we'll likely find them, and we may get taken over by them.

The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.

Great art transcends its culture and touches on that which is eternal.

Just write a little bit every day. Even if it's for only half an hour — write, write, write.

We live by revelations, as Christians, as artists, which means we must be careful never to get set into rigid molds. The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget all the questions and we become like the pharisee who listed all his considerable virtues, and thanked God that he was not like other men.

I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be.

A life lived in chaos is an impossibility.

A lot of the shadow self is the home of poetry, story, prayer. My deepest understandings are often released from the part of me of which I am least aware most of the time.

In our dreams we are able to fly . . . and that is a remembering of how we were meant to be.

Dare I? Of course I don't. But I'm going to anyhow because I have no choice.

I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children's books ask questions, and make the readers ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone's universe.

As I listen to the silence, I learn that my feelings about art and my feelings about the Creator of the Universe are inseparable. 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.

There are times when I feel that he has withdrawn from me, and I have often given him cause, but Easter is always the answer to My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!