Madeleine L'Engle quote: "If we commit ourselves to one person for life, this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation."

Oh child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the affect of extreme complicat...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding un...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Some things have to be believed to be seen.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to man...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

I don't know if they're really like everybody else, or if they're able to pretend they are.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You're given the form, bu...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

A great ring of pure & endless light
Dazzles the darkness in my heart
And breaks apart...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most ...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

A truly great work of art breaks beyond the bounds of the period and culture in which it is created,...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

In the literary world today, Christianity has pretty well replaced sex as the present pet taboo, not...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

We look not at the things which are what you would call seen, but at the things which are not seen. ...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and com...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Creative scientists and saints expect revelation and do not fear it. Neither do children. But as we ...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable....
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

I have advice for people who want to write. I don't care whether they're 5 or 500. There are three t...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

No long-term marriage is made easily, and there have been times when I've been so angry or so hurt t...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, who...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

I love, therefore I am vulnerable.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than w...
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...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

People are more than just the way they look.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

It might be a good idea if, like the White Queen, we practiced believing six impossible things every...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

We all tend to make zealous judgments and thereby close ourselves off from revelation. If we feel th...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Don't try to comprehend with your mind. Your minds are very limited. Use your intuition.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birthgiver. In a very real sense the artist (male or ...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

I do not know everything; still many things I understand.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Qui plussait, plus se tait. French, you know. The more a man knows, the less he talks.
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 think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

I Name you Echthroi. I Name you Meg.
I Name you Calvin.
I Name you Mr. Jenkins.
I Nam...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

We live by revelation, as Christians, as artists, which means we must be careful never to get set in...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

I didn't mean to tell you," Mrs. Whatsit faltered. "I didn't mean ever to let you know. But oh, my d...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Love of music, of sunsets and sea; a liking for the same kind of people; political opinions that are...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

We can surely no longer pretend that our children are growing up into a peaceful, secure, and civili...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

the discoveries don't come when you're looking for them. They come when for some reason you've let g...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

The peculiar idea that bigger is better has been around for at least as long as I have, and it's alw...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

God promised to make you free. He never promised to make you independent.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

One of the most pusillanimous things we of the female sex have done throughout the centuries is to h...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, ...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

When I start a new seminar I tell my students that I will undoubtedly contradict myself, and that I ...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

As Emmanuel, Cardinal Suhard says, "To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor ...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Basically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art, because all true art...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Jesus, who comes across in the Gospels as extraordinarily strong, begged in the garden, with drops o...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Growing up is a process that never ends. It isn't a point you attain so you can say, Hooray, I'm gro...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Maybe that's the best part of going away for a vacation-coming home again.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate muc...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

In my dreams, I never have an age.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

It is ... through the world of the imagination which takes us beyond the restrictions of provable fa...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

You cannot see the past that did not happen any more than you can foresee the future.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Western man has tried for too many centuries to fool himself that he lives in a rational world. No. ...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

But there is something about Time. The sun rises and sets. The stars swing slowly across the sky and...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Calvin said, "Do you know that this is the first time I've seen you without your glasses?"

MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Think of the person you love the most in the world. Do you really see them visually? Or don't you se...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

For an artist is not a consumer, as our commercials urge us to be. An artist is a nourisher and a cr...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

If it can be verified, we don't need faith... Faith is for that which lies on the other side of reas...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I wa...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Our country in general assumes that "the pursuit of happiness" really means "the pursuit of pleasure...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Stories are like children. They grow in their own way.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

The foolish of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of god is stronger than men. For ye see your ...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Human beings are the only creatures who are allowed to fail. If an ant fails, it's dead. But we're a...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

It was a star," Mrs. Whatsit said sadly. "A star giving up its life in battle with the Thing. It won...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

The well-intentioned mothers who don't want their children polluted by fairy tales would not only de...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

When we lose our myths we lose our place in the universe.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Come t'e' picciol fallo amaro morso! Dante. What grievous pain a little fault doth give thee!
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Ridicule is a terrible witherer of the flower of imagination. It binds us where we should be free.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Ridicule is a terrible witherer of the flower of the imagination. It binds us where we should be fre...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it? Yes. Mrs. Wha...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Thinking I'm a moron gives people something to feel smug about," Charles Wallace said. "Why should I...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

when I’m mad I don’t have room to be scared.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

There will no longer be so many pleasant things to look at if responsible people do not do something...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

You see, though we travel together, we travel alone.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Experiment is the mother of knowledge.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Believing takes practice.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Our story is never written in isolation. We do not act in a one-man play. We can do nothing that doe...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

At Tara in this fateful hour,
I place all Heaven with its power,
And the sun with its brig...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

A winter ago I had an after-school seminar for high-school students and in one of the early sessions...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Two people whose opinion I respect told me that the word "Christian" would turn people off. This cer...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Jesus was more forgiving to those who made mistakes in love than to those who judged each other hars...
MADELINE L'ENGLE

I can still remember the feel in my hand of that most wonderful American coin ever minted, a nickel ...
PAUL ENGLE

It's a sight I plan to remember, this spontaneous unity when faced with disaster.
MARGARITA ENGLE

Our small ears never had such a workout as on the Fourth of July, hearing not only our own bursting ...
PAUL ENGLE

Verse is not written, it is bled; Out of the poet's abstract head. Words drip the poem on the pa...
PAUL ENGLE

Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tou...
PAUL ENGLE

I have lectured at Town Hall N.Y., The Library of Congress, Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Wellesley, Colum...
PAUL ENGLE

The sharpest memory of our old-fashioned Christmas eve is my mother's hand making sure I was set...
PAUL ENGLE

Contrary to slanderous Eastern opinion, much of Iowa is not flat, but rolling hills country with a l...
PAUL ENGLE

I began to write poetry in high school, and would ride miles over sandy roads in the fine hills arou...
PAUL ENGLE

Every Christmas should begin with the sound of bells, and when I was a child mine always did. But th...
PAUL ENGLE

A barn with cattle and horses is the place to begin Christmas; after all, that's where the origi...
PAUL ENGLE

Verse is not written, it is bled; Out of the poet's abstract head. Words drip the poem on the page; ...
PAUL ENGLE

Soldiers of the American Revolution fought that 18th century war with heavy muskets. In the early 20...
PAUL ENGLE

We just wanted to say thank you very much. Above all else, we had so much fun. I'm glad (so many peo...
BRITTANY ENGLE

I know going into the locker room I was so frustrated. I struggled shooting against Walpole and I co...
BRITTANY ENGLE

This is our last chance. There's a sense of urgency.
BRITTANY ENGLE

Our chemistry is definitely the key. It seems we're on the same page. We pass well because we've pla...
BRITTANY ENGLE

But maybe it's up in the hills under the leaves or in a ditch somewhere. Maybe it's never fo...
PAUL ENGLE

All families had their special Christmas food. Ours was called Dutch Bread, made from a dough halfwa...
PAUL ENGLE

The years rolled their brutal course down the hill of time. Still poor, my clothes still smelling of...
PAUL ENGLE

Seventh grade. Eleven years old. A bookworm-misfit with long black braids, childish white socks, poi...
MARGARITA ENGLE

Without vision you don't see, and without practicality the bills don't get paid.
PAUL ENGLE

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded ...
PAUL ENGLE

Touch was important. The evening of the Third of July we would go around the neighborhood and look a...
PAUL ENGLE

I had been warned about Jews by my gentile friends - they did terrible things with knives to boys.
PAUL ENGLE

You come to know the aches and vanities and tastes and intrigues of an entire neighborhood at a drug...
PAUL ENGLE

For my Oxford degree, I had to translate French and German philosophy (as it turned out, Descartes a...
PAUL ENGLE

It?s kind of sad, but it is time to close the store. It?s very sad for both of us because it?s been ...
ALICE ENGLE

Many jurisdictions still do not prosecute these cases without medical evidence. The evidence is not ...
BEVERLY ENGLE

The corncob was the central object of my life. My father was a horse handler, first trotting and pac...
PAUL ENGLE

It amazes me all the people with different expertise, what it takes to make things happen.
BEVERLY ENGLE

The minute people walk in the door, it's amazing to watch the expression on their faces. They're put...
BEVERLY ENGLE

The rate at which this technology has been adopted is remarkable, the fastest I have ever seen in th...
BARRY ENGLE

I have never seen an automotive technology with that fast an adoption rate.
BARRY ENGLE

Everyone talks about alternative fuels, but we're doing it.
BARRY ENGLE

Everything from roofs to hurricane panels and hurricane shutters and windows to generators and scree...
TODD ENGLE

The wind actually caused the vehicle to twist and I lost it. I turned around and ended up in the dit...
MIKE ENGLE

I have published in 'The New Yorker,' 'Holiday,' 'Life,' 'Mademoiselle,&...
PAUL ENGLE

Before Elijah could raise a nation from the dead, he raised just one dead child.
LOU ENGLE

We knew we were going to have to play well to win. At our drawing, I thought about going in the uppe...
TODD ENGLE

It was very big to get that win and something we kind of played off. I felt no matter what happened ...
TODD ENGLE

I think this is a team that we match up with pretty well when it comes to height. I think Abby (Nola...
TODD ENGLE

The whole world's safety depends on the words of two men who are enemies.
MARGARITA ENGLE

If you fumble the ball on the 15-yard line (sic), the other team's going to score. It's just that si...
PAT ENGLE

You can't give up 28 points in the first five minutes (sic). Ultimately with a lot of teams, speed i...
PAT ENGLE

Books are enchanted. Books help me travel. Books help me breathe.
MARGARITA ENGLE

I would spend entire days there as a kid.
GUS ENGLE

Wisdom is knowing when you can't be wise.
PAUL ENGLE

Is there any way that two people from faraway places can ever really understand each other's daydrem...
MARGARITA ENGLE

We've had killer courses the last couple of weeks; I thought it was kind of nice when I walked it.
MARGIE ENGLE

He's got a lot of scope and he's got a lot of heart.
MARGIE ENGLE

At the steamy train station
in New Orleans, horrifying signs
above drinking fountains
MARGARITA ENGLE

That I can learn to trust You,
And every way to love You;
Strip away all that remains,
F...
JOEL ENGLE

Slavery all day,
and then, suddenly, by nightfall- freedom!
MARGARITA ENGLE

I can't understand
why dark northern soldiers
and light ones
are seperated into di...
MARGARITA ENGLE

Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.
LOUIS L'AMOUR

Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.
LOUIS L'AMOUR

I would not sit waiting for some vague tomorrow, nor for something to happen. One could wait a lifet...
LOUIS L'AMOUR

The key to understanding any people is in its art: its writing, painting, sculpture.
LOUIS L'AMOUR

The terms we use for what is considered supernatural are woefully inadequate. Beyond such terms as g...
LOUIS L'AMOUR

What a strange thing it is to recognize a sound like the shriek of a wounded animal, when you've nev...
JOHN L'HEUREUX

When a man is one of a kind, he will be lonely wherever he is.
LOUIS L'AMOUR

For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biograph...
LOUIS L'AMOUR

Nothing is quite so beautiful as when you share it with it with someone else. There is no purpose in...
LOUIS L'AMOUR

Much of the study of history is a matter of comparison, of relating what was happening in one area t...
LOUIS L'AMOUR

I'm sorry! I really am! I wanted to get out of this place! I want to live! I want to get away from h...
LOUIS L'AMOUR

Browsing through the shelves in bookstores or libraries, I was completely happy.
LOUIS L'AMOUR

A lady should be allowed to choose her comp'ny, an' should be treated like a lady until she shows sh...
LOUIS L'AMOUR

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning.
LOUIS L'AMOUR

The mind is a basket . . . if you put nothing in, you get nothing out.
LOUIS L'AMOUR

Up to a point a person’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and changes in the world about t...
LOUIS L'AMOUR

A ship does not sail with yesterday's wind.
LOUIS L'AMOUR

Because a man plays a king superbly well does not mean that he would make a good king.
LOUIS L'AMOUR

Can you see the future, Kerbouchard?"
"Who would wish to? Our lives hold a veil between anticip...
LOUIS L'AMOUR

Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on
LOUIS L'AMOUR

Personally, I do not believe the human mind has any limits but those we impose ourselves.
LOUIS L'AMOUR

To live in a city, one must be larger than one's environment or enjoy belonging to the crowd.
LOUIS L'AMOUR

All that was speculation, and a man can get carried away by a reasonable theory. Often a man finds a...
LOUIS L'AMOUR

Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what ...
LOUIS L'AMOUR

You can have all the wine and dragons that my money can buy. That’s what the old woman told me, an...
L'PONI BALDWIN

He taunted me, "Pony boy, pony boy," because I liked ponies. Pony boy. He always came to vent his an...
L'PONI BALDWIN

I saw the last piece of innocence unfurl inside of her.

-Nick Plato (from the story Plato...
L'PONI BALDWIN

He couldn't take his eye off that dragon
There was something odd about the swaying of his tail<...
L'PONI BALDWIN

When he removed his robes, you could see the hundreds of scars and bruises that shamelessly decorate...
L'PONI BALDWIN

La vida es un regalo diario. Valóralo. Al final, lo que importa no son los años de vida, sino la v...
PAOLA CALASANZ ''DULCINEA''

The capability of negotiating... is something that means you not only have to understand fully what ...
MADELEINE ALBRIGHT

I think I was probably an early teenager when I discovered Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and a bunch of pe...
MADELEINE PEYROUX

Second records aren't usually very good. Even Bob Dylan's was a bit disappointing.
MADELEINE PEYROUX

I was just learning to play guitar when Tracy Chapman came out. She wrote these songs, she played th...
MADELEINE PEYROUX

I'm very conscious of developing my singing, technically and stylistically. I want it to become ...
MADELEINE PEYROUX

Seeing how those companies operate, it didn't amount to a massive vote of confidence in their ar...
MADELEINE PEYROUX

I love playing to people and seeing them react.
MADELEINE PEYROUX

I was very lucky. Things happened, both bad and good, but I never got into real, deep trouble. But i...
MADELEINE PEYROUX

My father's record collection was full of New Orleans music of all kinds. I used to listen to th...
MADELEINE PEYROUX

Once I was in the city, I really enjoyed it. Just to experience things. There was so much new stuff.
MADELEINE PEYROUX

My father had a varied ear, from Hank Williams to Ravel.
MADELEINE PEYROUX

Jazz really does try to include everything. It's always been popular music. But the wonderful th...
MADELEINE PEYROUX

I've always loved singing. I find it exhilarating.
MADELEINE PEYROUX

I listened to Billie Holiday a lot in order to learn to sing. She remains one of the extraordinary j...
MADELEINE PEYROUX

I had my guitar and some talent so that I could make friends with intelligent people and could talk ...
MADELEINE PEYROUX

You have to let it all hang out, let go of the ideas that were more comfortable and embrace some of ...
MADELEINE PEYROUX

No matter where we come from or where we're going, we've all got memories to contend with, a...
MADELEINE PEYROUX

It's wonderful to work with someone with mentor status.
MADELEINE PEYROUX

A book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, w...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

With each book I write, I become more and more convinced that the books have a life of their own, qu...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've ...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Because you're not what I would have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth, you are.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Conversion for me was not a Damascus Road experience. I slowly moved into an intellectual acceptance...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

It is the ability to choose which makes us human.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

In the evening of life we shall be judged on love, and not one of us is going to come off very well,...
MADELEINE L'ENGLE

If we commit ourselves to one person for life, this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation.

Madeleine L'Engle

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