01c. 1962 ADAt Tara in this fateful hour,I place all Heaven with its power,And the sun with its brightness,And the snow with its whiteness,And the fire with all the strength it hath,And the lightning with its rapid wrath,And the winds with their swiftness along their path,And the sea with its deepness,And the rocks with their steepness,And the earth with its starkness:All these I place,By God's almighty help and graceBetween myself and the powers of darkness!Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
02c. 1962 ADThe well-intentioned mothers who don't want their children polluted by fairy tales would not only deny them their childhood, with its high creativity, but they would have them conform to the secular world, with its dirty devices. The world of fairy tale, fantasy, myth, is inimical to the secular world, and in total opposition to it, for it is interested not in limited laboratory proofs but in truth.Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
03c. 1962 ADGrowing up is a process that never ends. It isn't a point you attain so you can say, Hooray, I'm grown up. Some people never grow up. And nobody ever finishes growing. Or shouldn't. If you stop you might as well quit. What I have to tell you is that it never gets any easier. It goes right on being rough forever. But nothing that's easy is worth anything. You ought to have learned that by now. What happens as you keep on growing is that all of a sudden you realize that it's more exciting and beautiful than scary and awful.Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
04c. 1962 ADYou don't want him for a reason. You want him because he's your father.Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
05c. 1962 ADIn so-called primitive societies there are two words for power, mana and taboo: the power which creates and the power which destroys; the power which is benign and the power which is malign. Odd that we have retained in our vocabulary the word for dangerous power, taboo, and have lost mana.Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
06c. 1962 ADThe story comes, and it is pure story. That's all I set out to write. But I don't believe that we can write any kind of story without including, whether we intend to or not, our response to the world around us.Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
07c. 1962 ADLords of spirit, Lords of breath,Lords of fireflies, stars, and light,Who will keep the world from death?Who will stop the coming night?Blue eyes, blue eyes, have the sight.Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
08c. 1962 ADWe have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
09c. 1962 ADShe was enfolded in the great wings of Mrs. Whatsit and she felt comfort and strength pouring through her. Mrs. Whatsit was not speaking aloud, and yet through the wings Meg understood words."My child, do not despair. Do you think we would have brought you here if there was no hope? We are asking you to do a difficult thing, but we are confident that you can do it. Your father needs help, he needs courage, and for his children he may be able to do what he cannot do for himself.Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
10c. 1962 ADWe want them to see their home planet," Mrs. Whatsit said. The Medium lost the delighted smile she had worn till then. "Oh, why must you make me look at unpleasant things when there are so many delightful ones to see?"Again Mrs. Which's voice reverberated through the cave. "There will no longer be so many pleasant things to look at if responsible people do not do something about the unpleasant ones.Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
11c. 1962 ADWe are going to your father," Mrs. Which said. "But where is he?" Meg went over to Mrs. Which and stamped as though she were as young as Charles Wallace. Mrs. Whatsit answered in a voice that was low but quite firm. "On a planet that has given in. So you must prepare to be very strong.Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
12c. 1962 ADBut what is real? In the Bible we are constantly being given glimpses of a reality quite different from that taught in school, even in Sunday school. And these glimpses are not given to the qualified; there's the marvel. It may be that the qualified feel no need of them.Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
13c. 1962 ADToday we live in a society that seems to be less and less concerned with reality. We drink instant coffee and reconstituted orange juice. We buy our vegetables on cardboard trays covered with plastic. But perhaps the most dehumanizing thing of all is that we have allowed the media to call us consumers--ugly. No! I don't want to be a consumer. Anger consumes. Forest fires consume. Cancer consumes.Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
14c. 1962 ADHe knew what she wanted, and he wanted it, too; he was ready, but not, despite her gorgeousness, with Tiglah. Tiglah was not worth losing his ability to touch a unicorn.Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
15c. 1962 ADOne thing I have discovered since I've been ill, though, is that nobody ever knows anybody, and maybe least of all the people who are closest to them. Sort of a business of not being able to see the trees for the woods. We all live in isolated prisons of our own bodies and there's no real contact with any other human being. That's what sex is, in a way, isn't it, a desperate striving for contact? With which cheerful Thought for Today, I will bid you good afternoon.Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
16c. 1962 ADAn infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy.Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
18c. 1962 ADThe best way to guide children without coercion is to be ourselves.Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
19c. 1962 ADIf it's not good enough for adults, it's not good enough for children. If a book that is going to be marketed for children does not interest me, a grownup, then I am dishonoring the children for whom the book is intended, and I am dishonoring books. And words.Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
20c. 1962 ADOur children... have a passionate need for the dimension of transcendence, mysticism, way-outness. We're not offering it to them legitimately. The tendency of the churches to be relevant and more-secular-than-thou does not answer our need for the transcendent. As George Tyrrell wrote about a hundred years ago, "If a [man's] craving for the mysterious, the wonderful, the supernatural, be not fed on true religion, it will feed itself on the garbage of any superstition that is offered to it.Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
21c. 1962 ADThe child is aware of unlimited potential, and this munificence is one of the joys of creativity.Those of use who struggle in our own ways, small or great, trickles or rivers, to create, are constantly having to unlearn what the world would teach us...Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
22c. 1962 ADI believe that every one of us here tonight has as clear and vital a vocation as anyone in a religiousorder. We have the vocation of keeping alive Mr. Melcher's excitement in leading young peopleinto an expanding imagination. Because of the very nature of the world as it is today our childrenreceive in school a heavy load of scientific and analytic subjects, so it is in their reading for fun,for pleasure, that they must be guided into creativity. These are forces working in the world asnever before in the history of mankind for standardization, for the regimentation of us all, orwhat I like to call making muffins of us, muffins all like every other muffin in the muffin tin.This is the limited universe, the drying, dissipating universe, that we can help our children avoidby providing them with “explosive material capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly.Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
23c. 1962 ADI am encouraged as I look at some of those who have listened to their "different drum": Einstein was hopeless at school math and commented wryly on his inadequacy in human relations. Winston Churchill was an abysmal failure in his early school years. Byron, that revolutionary student, had to compensate for a club foot; Demosthenes for a stutter; and Homer was blind. Socrates couldn't manage his wife, and infuriated his countrymen. And what about Jesus, if we need an ultimate example of failure with one's peers? Or an ultimate example of love?Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
24c. 1962 ADI can't think of one great human being in the arts, or in history generally, who conformed, who succeeded, as educational experts tell us children must succeed, with his peer group...If a child in their classrooms does not succeed with his peer group, then it would seem to many that both child and teacher have failed. Have they? If we ever, God forbid, manage to make each child succeed with his peer group, we will produce a race of bland and faceless nonentities, and all poetry and mystery will vanish from the face of the earth.Madeleine L'Engle / quote ↗
