Quotes from Madeleine L'Engle

To create a work of art, great or small, is work, hard work, and work requires discipline and order.

Like it or not, we either add to the darkness of indifference and out-and-out evil which surround us or we light a candle to see by.

we do not have to understand God's ways, or the suffering and brokenness and pain that sooner or later come to us all. But we do have to know in the very depths of our being that the ultimate end of the story, no matter how many aeons it takes, is going to be all right.

I am grateful, too, to Lewis for having the courage to yell, to doubt, to kick at God with angry violence. This is part of a healthy grief not often encouraged. It is helpful indeed that C.S. Lewis, who has been such a successful apologist for Christianity, should have the courage to admit doubt about what he has so superbly proclaimed. It gives us permission to admit our own doubts, our own angers and anguishes, and to know that they are part of the soul's growth.

But an acceptable Christianity is not Christian; a comprehensible God is no more than an idol. I don't want that kind of God.

Everything that we do either draws the Kingdom of love closer, or pushes it further off.

I felt so insufferably alone. I remembered Miss Myra Turnbull telling us once that this desperate need we have to belong to someone goes back to our earliest forebears, the lowest form of animal life, the amoeba, each individual particle of which has to be joined to other particles to make a whole. Then

Don't be afraid to be afraid.

You matter. You are. Be.

In a world where pleasure rules, people tend to be underdeveloped in every other way.

When will you come and how will you come and will we be ready

My daughter, I am not a Mrs Whatsit, a Mrs Who, or a Mrs Which. Yes, Calvin has told me everything he could. I am a human being, and a very fallible one. But I agree with Calvin. We were sent here for something. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.