A Wrinkle in Time Quotes

“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

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

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

“People are more than just the way they look.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“If you aren't unhappy sometimes you don't know how to be happy.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“Only a fool is not afraid.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, A Wrinkle in Time

“Euripedes. Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“Qui plussait, plus se tait. French, you know. The more a man knows, the less he talks.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, 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, A Wrinkle in Time

“Have you ever tried to get to your feet with a sprained dignity?”
― Madeleine L'Engle, 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, A Wrinkle in Time

“Wild nights are my glory!”
― Madeleine L'Engle, 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, A Wrinkle in Time

“It was a dark and stormy night.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“Love. That was what she had that IT did not have.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“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.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, 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, 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, A Wrinkle in Time

“You see, though we travel together, we travel alone.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“Meg, I give you your faults."

"My faults!" Meg cried.

"Your faults."

"But I'm always trying to get rid of my faults!"

"Yes," Mrs. Whatsit said. "However, I think you'll find they'll come in very handy on Camazotz.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“Speaking of ways, pet, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“The truth is that I hate to think about other people reading my books," Miranda said. "It's like watching someone go through the box of private stuff that I keep under my bed.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“To love is to be vulnerable; and it is only in vulnerability and risk—not safety and security—that we overcome darkness.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“But a planet can also become dark because of “too strong a desire for security … the greatest evil there is.” Meg resists her father’s analysis. What’s wrong with wanting to be safe? Mr. Murry insists that “lust for security” forces false choices and a panicked search for safety and conformity. This reminded me that my grandmother would get very annoyed when anyone would talk about “the power of love.” Love, she insisted, is not power, which she considered always coercive. To love is to be vulnerable; and it is only in vulnerability and risk—not safety and security—that we overcome darkness.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time