“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. - Mrs. Whatsit”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“I do not know everything; still many things I understand.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“Like and equal are not the same thing at all.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“People are more than just the way they look.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“If you aren't unhappy sometimes you don't know how to be happy.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“Thinking I'm a moron gives people something to feel smug about," Charles Wallace said. "Why should I disillusion them?”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“Only a fool is not afraid.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“They are very young. And on their earth, as they call it, they never communicate with other planets. They revolve about all alone in space."
"Oh," the thin beast said. "Aren't they lonely?”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“We do not know what things look like.
We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing,this seeing. -Aunt Beast”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point. French. Pascal. The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“I don't understand it any more than you do, but one thing I've learned is that you don't have to understand things for them to be.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“Qui plussait, plus se tait. French, you know. The more a man knows, the less he talks.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“Euripedes. Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“Experiment is the mother of knowledge.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“Calvin said, "Do you know that this is the first time I've seen you without your glasses?"
"I'm blind as a bat without them. I'm near-sighted, like father."
"Well, you know what, you've got dream-boat eyes," Calvin said. "Listen, you go right on wearing your glasses. I don't think I want anybody else to see what gorgeous eyes you have.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“A book, too, can be a star, “explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,” a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“It seemed to travel with her, to sweep her aloft in the power of song, so that she was moving in glory among the stars, and for a moment she, too, felt that the words Darkness and Light had no meaning, and only this melody was real.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“Have you ever tried to get to your feet with a sprained dignity?”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it? Yes. Mrs. Whatsit said. You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“It was a dark and stormy night.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“Meg, don't you think you'd make a better adjustment to life if you faced facts?"
I do face facts," Meg said.
They're lots easier to face than people, I can tell you.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“Love. That was what she had that IT did not have.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“It was the same way with silence. This was more than silence. A deaf person can feel vibrations. Here there was nothing to feel.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“Itt iss Eevill…"
"What is going to happen?"
"Wee wwill cconnttinnue tto ffightt!"…
"And we’re not alone, you know, children," came Mrs.Whatsit, the comforter. "…some of the best fighters have come from your own planet…"
"Who have our fighters been?" Calvin asked.
"Oh, you must know them, dear," Mrs.Whatsit said. Mrs.Who’s spectacles shone out at them triumphantly.
"And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
“I don't know if they're really like everybody else, or if they're able to pretend they are.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wrinkle in Time
Madeleine L'Engle
Born place: in New York City, New York, The United States
Born date November 29, 1918
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“Even over the rumble of the quakes, I thought I heard Jack rasp, "Bebe?" Then louder: "Doan you do this!"
I gasped out, "T-take care of him, Jack-" Death yanked me to him, sweeping me up in his arms. I fought him with any strength I had left, hyperventilating, dulling my claws on his armor, not even scratching it. Death just laughed.
"Evie! EVIE!" Jack's bellows grew fainter as the light brightened. "I'm comin' for you! You know I will!”
― Kresley Cole, quote from Endless Knight
“I think that when enough time has passed, when you've survived that which you didn't imagine you could, there's a dignity in that. Something you can own. A pride in knowing the pain made you stronger. The pain made you fight to succeed. Someday, when I'm living my dreams, I'm going to think of all the things that broke my heart and I'm going to be thankful for them. – TF”
― Mia Sheridan, quote from Kyland
“Kim could swear that the doctor’s voice lowered slightly, gently. Or she could just be completely paranoid. The words childhood and trauma were spoken more like a whisper. ‘No, it was in college, I think.’ The doctor said nothing. Kim spoke with a half-smile. ‘My childhood was pretty normal; loved sweets, hated cabbage, normal arguments with parents about staying out too late.’ Alex smiled at her and nodded. ‘I think it might have been the stress of exams.’ Just in time, Kim realised the doctor had used her own technique of remaining silent against her. Luckily she’d realised before she’d revealed any truth of her childhood at all. ‘You know, Kim, it’s surprising how many times you used the word “normal”. Most people say that about their childhood and yet there is no such thing unless you live in a television commercial. What did your parents do?’ Kim thought quickly and chose the sixth set of foster parents. ‘My mum worked part-time at Sainsbury’s and my dad was a bus driver.’ ‘Any siblings?’ Kim’s mouth dried and she only trusted herself to shake her head. ‘No major losses or traumatic events before the age of ten?’ Again, Kim shook her head. Alex laughed.”
― Angela Marsons, quote from Evil Games
“She could see it surprised him, too, sometimes. He told her once when there was a storm a bird had flown into the house. He’d never seen one like it. The wind must have carried it in from some far-off place. He opened all the doors and windows, but it was so desperate to escape that for a while it couldn’t find a way out. “It left a blessing in the house,” he said. “The wildness of it. Bringing the wind inside.”
― Marilynne Robinson, quote from Lila
“We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. I desperately wanted mercy for Jimmy Dill and would have done anything to create justice for him, but I couldn’t pretend that his struggle was disconnected from my own. The ways in which I have been hurt—and have hurt others—are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us. Paul Farmer, the renowned physician who has spent his life trying to cure the world’s sickest and poorest people, once quoted me something that the writer Thomas Merton said: We are bodies of broken bones. I guess I’d always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we’re fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we’re shattered by things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion. We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity. I thought of the guards strapping Jimmy Dill to the gurney that very hour. I thought of the people who would cheer his death and see it as some kind of victory. I realized they were broken people, too, even if they would never admit it. So many of us have become afraid and angry. We’ve become so fearful and vengeful that we’ve thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak—not because they are a threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes us seem tough, less broken. I thought of the victims of violent crime and the survivors of murdered loved ones, and how we’ve pressured them to recycle their pain and anguish and give it back to the offenders we prosecute. I thought of the many ways we’ve legalized vengeful and cruel punishments, how we’ve allowed our victimization to justify the victimization of others. We’ve submitted to the harsh instinct to crush those among us whose brokenness is most visible. But simply punishing the broken—walking away from them or hiding them from sight—only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.”
― Bryan Stevenson, quote from Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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