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...
loss past understanding
For the past several generations we've forgotten what the psychologists call our archaic understanding, a willingness to know things in their deepest, most mythic sense. We're all born with archaic understanding, and I'd guess that the loss of it goes directly along with the loss of ourselves as creators.
lying believe understanding
The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living. What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder.
attitude mean understanding
Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.
giving understanding needs
Friends--or lovers--are not always available to each other. Inner turmoils can cause us to be unhearing when someone needs us, to need to receive understanding when we should be giving understanding.
knowledge understanding way
That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along.
children husband writing
During the long drag of years before our youngest child went to school, my love for my family and my need to write were in acute conflict. The problem was really that I put two things first. My husband and children came first. So did my writing. Bump.
real artist maturity
Unlearning is the choice, conscious or unconscious, of any real artist. And it is the true sign of maturity.
anger
Don't keep putting your anger off. Until you go through it, you can't get out of it.
hurt joy feelings
If we aren't capable of being hurt we aren't capable of feeling joy.
character risk suffering
There is little character or loveliness in the face of someone who has shunned risk, avoided suffering and rejected life
believe two trying
A great piece of literature does not try to coerce you to believe it or agree with it. A great piece of literature simply is . It is a vehicle of truth, but it is not a blueprint, and we tend to confuse the two.
children hero men
The uncommon man has done the impossible and there has been that much more light in the world because of it. Children respond to heroes by thinking creatively and sometimes in breaking beyond the bounds of the impossible in their turn, and so becoming heroes themselves.
real artist imagination
We do live, all of us, on many different levels, and for most artists the world of imagination is more real than the world of the kitchen sink.
religious art children
When a child who has been conceived in love is born to a man and a woman, the joy of that birth sings throughout the universe. The joy of writing or painting is much the same, and the insemination comes not from the artist himself but from his relationship with those he loves, with the whole world. All real art is, in its true sense, religious; it is a religious impulse; there is not such thing as a non-religious subject.