Madeleine L'Engle

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 it for children.

A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.

A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming.

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.

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.

Some things have to be believed to be seen.

Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself.

Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.

Believing takes practice.

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