Emily Greisz > Emily's Quotes

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“Reading is one form of escape. Running for your life is another.”
― Lemony Snicket

“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.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“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.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Some things have to be believed to be seen.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“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, A Wrinkle in Time

“The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Ring of Endless Light

“Believing takes practice.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time: With Related Readings

“We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, The Rock That Is Higher: Story as Truth

“We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time: With Related Readings

“I do not know everything; still many things I understand.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be... This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages...the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide... Far too many people misunderstand what *putting away childish things* means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year-old means being grownup. When I'm with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grown-up, then I don't ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a child's awareness and joy, and *be* fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Don't try to comprehend with your mind. Your minds are very limited. Use your intuition.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wind in the Door

“It might be a good idea if, like the White Queen, we practiced believing six impossible things every morning before breakfast, for we are called on to believe what to many people is impossible. Instead of rejoicing in this glorious "impossible" which gives meaning and dignity to our lives, we try to domesticate God, to make his might actions comprehensible to our finite minds.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“In my dreams, I never have an age.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“When we lose our myths we lose our place in the universe.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there's no danger that we will confuse God's work with our own, or God's glory with our own.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

“I love, therefore I am vulnerable.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

“We don't want to feel less when we have finished a book; we want to feel that new possibilities of being have been opened to us. We don't want to close a book with a sense that life is totally unfair and that there is no light in the darkness; we want to feel that we have been given illumination.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water

“The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birthgiver. In a very real sense the artist (male or female) should be like Mary who, when the angel told her that she was to bear the Messiah, was obedient to the command.

...I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, "Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me." And the artist either says, "My soul doth magnify the Lord," and willingly becomes the bearer of the work, or refuses; but the obedient response is not necessarily a conscious one, and not everyone has the humble, courageous obedience of Mary.

As for Mary, she was little more than a child when the angel came to her; she had not lost her child's creative acceptance of the realities moving on the other side of the everyday world. We lose our ability to see angels as we grow older, and that is a tragic loss.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

“When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

“We live by revelation, as Christians, as artists, which means we must be careful never to get set into rigid molds. The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget the questions, and we become smug like the Pharisee who listed all his considerable virtues, and thanked God that he was not like other men.

Unamuno might be describing the artist as well as the Christian as he writes, "Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

“Like and equal are not the same thing at all.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time