Quotes from A Wrinkle in Time

Madeleine L'Engle ·  211 pages

Rating: (749.1K votes)


“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


About the author

Madeleine L'Engle
Born place: in New York City, New York, The United States
Born date November 29, 1918
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“We can fly!
“We can become butterflies!
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and it doesn’t matter!”
As he heard his own
message he realized how
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to get high.
To get to the “top” he
must fly, not climb.”
― Trina Paulus, quote from Hope for the Flowers


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― Farley Mowat, quote from Never Cry Wolf


“He curled his finger under her chin as he rasped, "I'm goin' tae get it right this time, you know."
"I believe that, Scot." She gazed up at him with all the love she felt. "That's why you're still the dark horse I'm betting on.”
― Kresley Cole, quote from If You Deceive


“Ian nodded. Do not question her, he told himself. Not when she is in a state like this.
Still, it was a pity to attack them with such force. Especially the girl, Amy. He'd never met anyone like her. Shy. Gentle. With an exciting edge of hostility. So unlike the girls back home, who flung themselves at him so often that his chauffeurs traveled with first-aid kits.
Doesn't she know better? Isn't she smart enough to stop the hunt?
It was the boy and the au pair. He was a pint-sized hothead. She was a collection of piercings and piggishness. If only Amy and Dan had stayed trapped in the cave in Seoul, at least long enough to get discouraged. Why did they antagonize Mother?
They don't know what it's like to live with her.
"Right you are," Ian said. "They're asking for it. Heaven forbid they listen to the brains of the outfit."
"And that would be–?" Isabel asked.
Ian looked away. "Well, the sister, I'd say. Amy."
He felt a smile inching across his face.
"Ian?" His mother grabbed his wrist. "If you are having the inkling of a shadow of a thought..."
"Mother!" Ian could feel the blood rushing to his face. "How could you suspect for a moment...?”
― Peter Lerangis, quote from The Viper's Nest


“Descartes, in his Third Meditation, said that God re-created the body at each successive moment. So that time was a form of sustenance. On earth time was marked by the sun and moon, by rotations that distinguished day from night, that had led to clocks and calendars. The present was a speck that kept blinking, brightening and diminishing, something neither alive nor dead. How long did it last? One second? Less? It was always in flux; in the time it took to consider it, it slipped away. In one of her notebooks from Calcutta were jottings in Udayan’s hand, on the laws of classical physics. Newton’s theory that time was an absolute entity, a stream flowing at a uniform rate of its own accord. Einstein’s contribution, that time and space were intertwined. He’d described it in terms of particles, velocities. A system of relations among instantaneous events. Something called time”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, quote from The Lowland


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