Angela Utley > Angela's Quotes

“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

“Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.”
― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“No long-term marriage is made easily, and there have been times when I've been so angry or so hurt that I thought my love would never recover. And then, in the midst of near despair, something has happened beneath the surface. A bright little flashing fish of hope has flicked silver fins and the water is bright and suddenly I am returned to a state of love again — till next time. I've learned that there will always be a next time, and that I will submerge in darkness and misery, but that I won't stay submerged. And each time something has been learned under the waters; something has been gained; and a new kind of love has grown. The best I can ask for is that this love, which has been built on countless failures, will continue to grow. I can say no more than that this is mystery, and gift, and that somehow or other, through grace, our failures can be redeemed and blessed.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.”
― 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

“Some things have to be believed to be seen.”
― 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

“Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, The Summer of the Great-Grandmother

“I do not know everything; still many things I understand.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Believing takes practice.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time: With Related Readings

“In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there's no danger that we will confuse God's work with our own, or God's glory with our own.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

“They are very young. And on their earth, as they call it, they never communicate with other planets. They revolve about all alone in space."
"Oh," the thin beast said. "Aren't they lonely?”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be... This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages...the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide... Far too many people misunderstand what *putting away childish things* means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year-old means being grownup. When I'm with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grown-up, then I don't ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a child's awareness and joy, and *be* fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Don't try to comprehend with your mind. Your minds are very limited. Use your intuition.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wind in the Door

“Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Swiftly Tilting Planet

“Creative scientists and saints expect revelation and do not fear it. Neither do children. But as we grow up and we are hurt, we learned not to trust.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water

“It's not my brain that's writing the book, it's these hands of mine.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“We don't want to feel less when we have finished a book; we want to feel that new possibilities of being have been opened to us. We don't want to close a book with a sense that life is totally unfair and that there is no light in the darkness; we want to feel that we have been given illumination.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water

“Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Ring of Endless Light

“In reading we must become creators.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time: With Related Readings

“I love, therefore I am vulnerable.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

“If it can be verified, we don't need faith... Faith is for that which lies on the other side of reason. Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“We look not at the things which are what you would call seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal. But the things that are not seen are eternal.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“She seems to have had the ability to stand firmly on the rock of her past while living completely and unregretfully in the present.”
― Madeleine L'Engle