“You are given the form, but you must write the sonnet for yourself.” — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
Inspiration does not always precede the act of writing; it often follows it. — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
“Someone said, 'It's all been done before.' Yes, I agreed, but we all have to say it in our own voice.” — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
Just write a little bit every day. Even if it's for only half an hour — write, write, write. — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness. — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
If you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
With each book I write, I become more and more convinced that the books have a life of their own, quite apart… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
Because I am a storyteller I live by words. Perhaps music is a purer art form. It may be that when we… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children's books ask questions, and make the readers ask… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
“One of the most helpful tools a writer has is his journals. Whenever someone asks how to become an author, I suggest… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
“The artist, if he is not to forget how to listen, must retain the visionwhich includes angels and dragons and unicorns, and… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
No matter how true I believe what I am writing to be, if the reader cannot also participate in that truth, then… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
Poetry, at least the kind I write, is written out of immediate need; it is written out of pain, joy, and experience… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you have to write… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
I know writers who write only when inspiration comes. How would Isaac Stern play if he played the violin only when he… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
When we are writing, or painting, or composing, we are, during the time of creativity, freed from normal restrictions, and are opened… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
It is all, as usual, paradox. I have to use what intellect I have in order to write books, but I write… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“We, and I think I'm speaking for many writers, don't know what it is that sometimes comes to make our books alive.… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
If I have something I want to say that is too difficult for adults to swallow, then I write it in a… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
When I have something to say that I think will be too difficult for adults, I write it in a book for… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
“A winter ago I had an after-school seminar for high-school students and in one of the early sessions Una, a brilliant fifteen-year-old,… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
“I have advice for people who want to write. I don't care whether they're 5 or 500. There are three things that… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“If the work comes to the artist and says, 'Here I am, serve me,' then the job of the artist, great or… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
“I heard a famous author say once that the hardest part of writing a book was making yourself sit down at the… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it? Yes. Mrs. Whatsit said. You're given… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
Stories have a richness that goes way beyond fact. My writing knows more than I know. What a writer must do is… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
A book comes and says, 'Write me.' My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
If you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
We find what we are looking for. If we are looking for life and love and openness and growth, we are likely… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I am convinced that each work of art, be it a great work of genius or something very small, has its own… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
“One of the hardest lessons I have to learn is how not to be judgmental about people who are judgmental. When I see how… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
Inspiration more often comes during the work than before it, because the largest part of the job of an artist is to listen to… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
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… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
Severe illness isolates those in close contact with it, because it inevitably narrows the focus of concern. To a certain extent this can lead… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
“Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.” — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
“Instead of rejoicing in this glorious “impossible” which gives meaning and dignity to our lives, we try to domesticate God, to make his mighty… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
I have never lived before...Until this summer, I did not know what it was to be alive. — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
“To love is to be vulnerable; and it is only in vulnerability and risk—not safety and security—that we overcome darkness.” — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
“IT was the most horrible, the most repellent thing she had ever seen, far more nauseating then anything she had ever imagined with her… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
I feel as though I'm not breathing when I'm out of his presence. He's the oxygen in my air, the sun in my universe,… — Madeleine L'Engle Copy Share Image
