Madeleine L'Engle
Madeleine L'Engle
Madeleine L'Englewas an American writer best known for young-adult fiction, particularly the Newbery Medal-winning A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels: A Wind in the Door, National Book Award-winning A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time. Her works reflect both her Christian faith and her strong interest in modern science...
children teaching facts
You've got to accept the fact that you are basically not teaching a subject, you are teaching children
alive vulnerable
To be alive is to be vulnerable.
teacher children oxygen
The creative impulse can be killed, but it cannot be taught. What a teacher can do... in working with children, is to give the flame enough oxygen so that it can burn. As far as I'm concerned, this providing of oxygen is one of the noblest of all vocations.
air wind land
We have not wondered enough at the delights God has given us to appreciate them, and be good stewards. We have overworked the land, poured pollutants into river and stream, fouled the air we breathe with gas fumes and chemical smoke spiraling up from industrial chimneys. We have sown the wind. We are reaping the whirlwind.
prison christ legalism
Only Christ can free us from the prison of legalism, and then only if we are willing to be freed.
writing
You learn to write by doing it.
character personality problem
The deeper and richer a personality is, the more full it is of paradox and contradiction. It is only a shallow character who offers us no problems of contrast.
rigidity
Be aware that rigidity imprisons.
writing want needs
If you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you.
adventure sometimes
And sometimes when we listen, we are led into places we do not expect, into adventures we do not always understand.
stories truth-is humans
As human beings, the closest we can get to truth is through story.
book writing might
Stories have a richness that goes way beyond fact. My writing knows more than I know. What a writer must do is listen to her book. It might take you where you don't expect to go.
spring past order
We need the rock of the past under our feet in order to spring forward into the future.
inspiration writing play
I know writers who write only when inspiration comes. How would Isaac Stern play if he played the violin only when he felt like it? He would be lousy.