Quotes from Madeleine L'Engle

When we seek our own pleasure as the ultimate good we place ourselves as the center of the universe. A fara or a man or a star has his place in the universe, but nothing created is the center.

Questions, questions."Gaudior stomped one silver hoof. "I am not some kind of computer. Only machines have glib answers for everything.

Good helps us, the stars help us, perhaps what you would call light helps us, love helps us.

And if God approves of people like Alicia, he doesn't want me; and the devil does. It's nice to be wanted, Mrs. Franklin. I haven't been wanted for a long time now.

Expand my love, Lord, so I can help to bear the pain, help your love move my love into the tired prostitute with false eyelashes and bunioned feet, the corrupt policeman with his hand open for graft, the addict, the derelict, the woman in the mink coat and discontented mouth, the high school girl with heavy books and frightened eyes. Help me through these scandalous particulars to understand your love. Help me to pray.

The better word, of course, is joy, because it doesn't have anything to do with pain, physical or spiritual. I have been wholly in joy when I have been in pain—childbirth is the obvious example. Joy is what has made the pain bearable and, in the end, creative rather than destructive.

Getting out of the way and listening is not something that comes easily, either in art or in prayer.

I'll ask you a riddle. What do you have the more of, the more of it you give away?

It is only when we are fully rooted that we are really able to move.

Fewmets to Mr. Jenkins, anyhow.

Time isn't any more important than size. All that is required of you is to be in the Now, in this moment which has been given us.

We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.