A Wrinkle in Time (Time Quintet, #1)

by Madeleine L'Engle

we are trying to learn about each other and see what is best to help you. We feel now that you are not dangerous, and that we will be allowed to help you.”

She tried to look around, but all she could see was shadows. Nevertheless there was a sense of openness, a feel of a gentle breeze moving lightly about, that kept the darkness from being oppressive.

“We do not know what things look like, as you say,” the beast said. “We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing, this seeing.”

“What a very strange world yours must be!” the beast said, “that such a peculiar-seeming thing should be of such importance.

to try to explain anything that could be seen with the eyes would be impossible, because the beasts in some way saw, knew, understood, far more completely than she, or her parents, or Calvin, or even Charles Wallace.

The gentle words, the feeling that this beast would be able to love her no matter what she said or did, lapped Meg in warmth and peace. She felt a delicate touch of tentacle to her cheek, as tender as her mother’s kiss.

“We look not at the things which are what you would call seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal. But the things which are not seen are eternal.”

While she had been in Aunt Beast’s arms Meg had felt safe and secure. Now her worries about Charles Wallace and her disappointment in her father’s human fallibility rose like gorge in her throat.

It seemed to her that neither her father nor Calvin were properly concerned about Charles Wallace.

the virtue has gone from them and now they are only glass.

“You are going to allow Meg the privilege of accepting this danger.

Don’t be afraid to be afraid.

If she could give love to IT perhaps it would shrivel up and die, for she was sure that IT could not withstand love. But she, in all her weakness and foolishness and baseness and nothingness, was incapable of loving IT. Perhaps it was not too much to ask of her, but she could not do it. But she could love Charles Wallace.