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Madeline L'Engle Quotes

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Famous Madeline L'Engle Quotes

“It doesn't work. Nothing works. If I don't talk, I'm sulking. If I talk I say something wrong. I've finished the workbook--The teacher said you must've helped me--and i know the reader by heart.”

“Mr. Jenkins screamed, in a way that she had never known a man could scream, a high, piercing screech. Then he rose up into the night like a great flapping bird, flew, screaming across the sky, became a rent, an emptiness, a slash of nothingness--”

“One time, when I was little more than a baby, I was taken to visit my grandmother, who was living in a cottage on a nearly uninhabited stretch of beach in northern Florida. All I remember of this visit is being picked up from my crib in what seemed the middle of the night and carried from my bedroom and out of doors, where I had my first look at the stars. “It must have been an unusually clear and beautiful night for someone to have said, “Let’s wake the baby and show her the stars.” The night sky, the constant rolling of the breakers against the shore, the stupendous light of the stars, all made an indelible impression on me. I was intuitively aware not only of a beauty I had never seen before but also that the world was far greater than the protected limits of the small child’s world which was all I had known thus far. I had a total, if not very conscious, moment of revelation: I saw creation bursting the bounds of daily restriction, and stretching out from dimension to dimension, beyond any human comprehension. I had been taught to say my prayers at night: Our Father, and a long string of God-blesses, and it was that first showing of the galaxies which gave me an awareness that the God I spoke to at bedtime was extraordinary and not just a bigger and better combination of the grownup powers of my father and mother. This early experience was freeing, rather than daunting, and since it was the first, it has been the foundation for all other such glimpses of glory. (The Irrational Season)”

“--So we reached our decisions simultaneously, and apart, and if I knew that Court was fighting a battle, did he, too, sense mine? Did it have anything to do with his coming back to life again? For he is here, I am no longer living with a marble image. And I will never know why. Court being Court I can never ask him why; we wrestled with our problems alone and we must live alone with the answers. And is it part of a marriage, part of being a human being, that we must always reach our decisions alone?”

“It's all right," Meg assured the Medium earnestly. "Truly it is, Mrs. Medium, and we thank you very much." "Are you sure?" the Medium asked, brightening. "Of course! It really helped me ever so much because it made me mad, and when I'm mad I don't have room to be scared.”

“I think your mythology would call them fallen angels. War and hate are their business, and one of their chief weapons is un-Naming--making people not know who they are. If someone knows who he is, really knows, then he doesn't need to hate.”

“Listen, she said, "cherubim have come to my planet before." "I know that. Where do you think I got my information?" "What do you know about us?" "I have heard that your host planet is shadowed, that it is troubled." "It is beautiful," Meg said defensively. She felt a rippling of his wings. "In the middle of your cities?" "Well-no-but I don't live in a city." "And is your planet peaceful?" "Well-no-it isn't very peaceful." "I had the idea," Proginoskes moved reluctantly within her mind, "that there are wars on your planet. People fighting and killing each other." "Yes, that's so, but-" "And children go hungry." "Yes." "And people don't understand each other." "Not always." "And there's-there's hate?" "Yes." She felt Proginoskes pulling away. "All I want to do," he was murmuring to himself, "is go some place quiet and recite the names of the stars...”