Madeleine Engle Quotes: Insightful Musing from a Literary Genius

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

A book, too, can be a star, ‘explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,’ a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.

Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.

To take advantage means to enjoy, to make the most of. Never let a minute go by that you don’t enjoy. But that doesn’t mean to gulp.?

The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.

We can’t take any credit for our talents. It’s how we use them that counts.

But what I cannot understand is why is there so much pain and torture and evil in a world managed by a Father of infinite love?

We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.?

Love isn’t how you feel. It’s what you do.

If it’s going to be a world with no time for sentiment, Duke, it’s not a world that I want to live in.

A book, too, can be a star, ‘explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,’ a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.

Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

You do not test out your freedom or worth in grandiose feats; you prove it in the details of the actions of every day.

The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.

To take all that we are and have and throw it into God?s hands, with no double-checking His decisions?that is faith..

Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.

Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself.

Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.

The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly.

Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. – Madeleine L’Engle

A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe. – Madeleine L’Engle

The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been. – Madeleine L’Engle

We can’t take any credit for our talents. It’s how we use them that counts. – Madeleine L’Engle

Just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean that the explanation doesn’t exist. – Madeleine L’Engle

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. – Madeleine L’Engle

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children. – Madeleine L’Engle

I have advice for people – period – who are in unhealthy relationships: Follow your heart. It will get you to where you need to be. Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it’s easy, the places that your heart takes you. – Madeleine L’Engle

Truth is eternal. Knowledge is changeable. It is disastrous to confuse them. – Madeleine L’Engle

L’Engle’s Rule of Funny: If it makes you laugh, it’s not as serious as you thought it was. – Madeleine L’Engle

Because to take away a man’s freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person. – Madeleine L’Engle

The question is not whether we are, but what we are going to do about it. – Madeleine L’Engle

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability… To be alive is to be vulnerable. – Madeleine L’Engle

Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light. – Madeleine L’Engle

This is the irrational season. When love blooms bright and wild. Had Mary been filled with reason, there’d have been no room for the child. – Madeleine L’Engle

It is the ability to choose which makes us human. – Madeleine L’Engle

I do not think that I will ever reach a stage when I will say, ?This is what I believe. Finished.? What I believe is alive ? and open to growth – Madeleine L’Engle

That?s the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they?ve been all along. – Madeleine L’Engle

We can surely no longer pretend that our children are growing up into a peaceful, secure, and civilized world. – Madeleine L’Engle

Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling. – Madeleine L’Engle.