Quotes from Madeleine L'Engle

Maybe if you aren't unhappy sometimes you don't know how to be happy.

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.

Many waters cannot quench love,' she whispered. 'Neither can floods drown it.

Hate is like cancer, separate from the normal cells, devouring and not being nourished, annihilating itself along with everything it attacks.

God doesn't stop the bad things from happening; that's never been part of the promise. The promise is: I am with you. I am with you now until the end of time.

Life...is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself.

Euripides. Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything.

I can't do it for love of God, like Tom Tallis, or for heaven's sake, as Mr. Frost said. But because I love people I have to act according to it—to the fact that I love them.

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.

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.

And joy, Grandfather would remind me, joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.

Her father said, "You know, my dears, the world has been abnormal for so long that we've forgotten what it's like to live in a peaceful and reasonable climate. If there is to be any peace or reason, we have to create it in our own hearts and homes." "Even at a time like this?" Meg asked. The call from Calvin, the sound of her husband's voice, had nearly broken her control. "Especially at a time like this," her mother said gently.