A Wrinkle in Time

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

We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.

I do not know everything; still many things I understand.

The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly.

Like and equal are not the same thing at all.

People are more than just the way they look.

If you aren't unhappy sometimes you don't know how to be happy.

A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.

Thinking I'm a moron gives people something to feel smug about," Charles Wallace said. "Why should I disillusion them?

Only a fool is not afraid.

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?

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

Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point. French. Pascal. The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing.

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.

Qui plussait, plus se tait. French, you know. The more a man knows, the less he talks.

Euripedes. Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything.

Experiment is the mother of knowledge.

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.

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.

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.

Have you ever tried to get to your feet with a sprained dignity?

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.

It was a dark and stormy night.

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.

Love. That was what she had that IT did not have.

It was the same way with silence. This was more than silence. A deaf person can feel vibrations. Here there was nothing to feel.

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.

I don't know if they're really like everybody else, or if they're able to pretend they are.