Madeleine L'Engle

Goodness has never been a guarantee of safety.

She began to feel the sense of wonderful elation that always came to her when beauty took hold of her and made her forget her fears.

My lovely shining fragile broken house is filled with flowers and founded on a rock.

If we are not willing to fail we will never accomplish anything. All creative acts involve the risk of failure.

People are more than just the way they look.

God promised to make you free. He never promised to make you independent.

I would like to travel light on this journey of life, to get rid of the encumbrances I acquire each day.

My dear, I'm seldom sure of anything. Life at best is a precarious business, and we aren't told that difficult or painful things won't happen, just that it matters. It matters not just to us but to the entire universe.

It takes too much energy to be against something unless it's really important.

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

Qui plussait, plus se tait. French, you know. The more a man knows, the less he talks.

It's hard to let go anything we love. We live in a world which teaches us to clutch. But when we clutch we're left with a fistful of ashes.

You're going to get hurt yourself, and badly, if you take everything so hard.

It seemed to travel with her, to sweep her aloft in the power of song, so that she was moving in glory among the stars, and for a moment she, too, felt that the words Darkness and Light had no meaning, and only this melody was real.

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

Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith. Faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.

As Emmanuel, Cardinal Suhard says, "To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist.

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.

On the other side of pain, there is still love.

People become trustworthy when they are trusted.

A book comes and says, 'Write me.