Art Quotes by Madeleine L'Engle

Art is communication.

— Madeleine L'Engle

If it's bad art, it's bad religion, no matter how pious the subject.

— Madeleine L'Engle

the artist is not separate from the work and therefore cannot judge it.

— Madeleine L'Engle

Great art transcends its culture and touches on that which is eternal.

— Madeleine L'Engle

Art should communicate with as many people as possible.

— Madeleine L'Engle

artists ... all have a need that cannot be met by another human being.

— Madeleine L'Engle

Great art always transcends its culture, while lesser art merely reflects it.

— Madeleine L'Engle

When the bright angel dominates, out comes a great work of art, a Michelangelo David or a Beethoven symphony.

— Madeleine L'Engle

Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling.

— Madeleine L'Engle

An artist is someone who cannot rest, who can never rest as long as there is one suffering creature in the world.

— Madeleine L'Engle

“to look at a work of art and then to make a judgement as to whether or not it is art, and…

— Madeleine L'Engle

To create a work of art, great or small, is work, hard work, and work requires discipline and order.

— Madeleine L'Engle

All children are artists, and it is an indictment of our culture that so many of them lose their creativity, their unfettered…

— Madeleine L'Engle

All forms of art are consciousness expanders, and I am convinced that they will take us further, and more consciously, than drugs.

— Madeleine L'Engle

I like the fact that in ancient Chinese art the great painters always included a deliberate flaw in their work: human creation…

— Madeleine L'Engle

Stories are able to help us to become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses behind all…

— Madeleine L'Engle

Art is an affirmation of life, a rebuttal of death. And here we blunder into paradox again, for during the creation of…

— Madeleine L'Engle

The rational intellect doesn't have a great deal to do with love, and it doesn't have a great deal to do with…

— Madeleine L'Engle

I think that all artists, regardless of degree of talent, are a painful, paradoxical combination of certainty and uncertainty, of arrogance and…

— Madeleine L'Engle

I can't think of one great human being in the arts, or in history generally, who conformed, who succeeded, as education experts…

— Madeleine L'Engle

“In art, either as creators or participators, we are helped to remember some of the glorious things we have forgotten, and some…

— Madeleine L'Engle

“All real art is, in its true sense, is a religious impulse; there is no such thing as a non-religious subject. But…

— Madeleine L'Engle

The creative impulse can be killed, but it cannot be taught. What a teacher can do... in working with children, is to…

— Madeleine L'Engle

“We lived on 82nd Street and the Metropolitan Museum was my short cut to Central Park. I wrote: "I go into the…

— Madeleine L'Engle

The journey homewards. Coming home. That's what it's all about. The journey to the coming of the Kingdom. That's probably the chief…

— Madeleine L'Engle

When we look at a painting, or hear a symphony, or read a book, and feel more Named, then, for us, that…

— Madeleine L'Engle

“We live by revelation, as Christians, as artists, which means we must be careful never to get set into rigid molds. The…

— Madeleine L'Engle

“I can't think of one great human being in the arts, or in history generally, who conformed, who succeeded, as educational experts…

— Madeleine L'Engle

When the artist is truly the servant of the work, the work is better than the artist; Shakespeare knew how to listen…

— Madeleine L'Engle

“So perhaps the reason I shuddered at the idea of writing something about 'Christian art' is that to paint a picture or…

— Madeleine L'Engle

“The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birthgiver. In a very real sense the artist (male or female)…

— Madeleine L'Engle

Basically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore 'religious.

— Madeleine L'Engle

When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work…

— Madeleine L'Engle

“You feel things too deeply to bear them unless you can get them out of yourself through some form of art.”

— Madeleine L'Engle

Picasso says that an artists paints not to ask a question but because he has found something and he wants to share—he…

— Madeleine L'Engle

Infinity is present in each part. A loving smile contains all art. The motes of starlight spark and dart. A grain of…

— Madeleine L'Engle

Unlearning is the choice, conscious or unconscious, of any real artist. And it is the true sign of maturity.

— Madeleine L'Engle

Detachment and involvement: the artist must have both. The link between them is compassion. It has taken me over fifty years to…

— Madeleine L'Engle

“An artist is a nourisher and a creator who knows that during the act of creation there is collaboration. We do not…

— Madeleine L'Engle

“I would venture a guess that an artist concentrating wholly unself-consciously, wholly thrown into his work, is incapable of producing pornography.”

— Madeleine L'Engle