Today is Madeleine's birthday (1918-2007) 🎂 . Let's celebrate the way her imagination keeps unfolding in new places — from readers discovering her for the first time to the many stories (Stranger Things!) shaped by her vision of curiosity, compassion, and possibility.

Inspiration comes during work, not before it. The Irrational Season

May your Thanksgiving be full of low candles and long conversations.

“Though abridged, L’Engle’s lilting text still features the literary embellishments of the earlier edition... Le’s ethereal illustrations evoke both beauty and whimsy as beasts and birds cavort upon the sand.” Kirkus review of Dance in the Desert www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews...

What about the camel going through the eye of the needle? Or the man with the beam in his own eye who sees the mote in his brother’s? And people accuse me of exaggerating! Walking on Water

I often seek theological insights in reading science fiction because this is a genre eminently suited to explorations of the nature of the Creator and creation. Walking on Water

“Through breathtaking, sensitive, imaginative storytelling, L’Engle shows the reader how it is only through choosing to take root in your home that one truly grows and experiences a life of deeper purpose.” Kevin Coolidge www.northcentralpa.com/life/the-blu...

The children themselves haven't yet isolated themselves by selfishness and indifference; they do not fall easily into the error of despair; they are considerably braver than most grownups. A Circle of Quiet

“Imagine...you're a publisher hearing a pitch about a children's book whose tangled plot braids together quantum physics, fractions and megaparsecs...casually tosses out phrases in French, Italian, German and ancient Greek. Sound like the next kids' best-seller to you?” www.npr.org/2012/03/05/1...

A successful businesswoman had the temerity to ask me about my royalties...When told, she was duly impressed and remarked, “And to think, most people would have had to work so hard for that.” I choked over my tea, not wanting to laugh in her face. Walking on Water

“At book’s end, readers may agree with L’Engle that ‘the Incarnation is so far beyond our factual comprehension as to be laughable,’ yet her writing will also have broadened their understanding of this mystery.” -Publishers Weekly, 2001, Bright Evening Star review

I wish the church would be brave enough to acknowledge that there are questions to which, during our mortal lives, we have no answers. The Rock that is Higher

Success is one of the dirtiest temptations of the devil. Walking on Water

I have never served a work as I would like to, but I do try, with each book, to serve to the best of my ability, and this attempt at serving is the greatest privilege and the greatest joy that I know. Madeleine L’Engle Herself

Dance in the Desert comes out tomorrow! www.instagram.com/p/DOKFuqFDM2j/

It is still taught in some seminaries that it is a heresy to think that God can suffer with us. But what does the incarnation show us but the ultimate act of particularity? This is what compassion is all about. A Circle of Quiet

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.

“Inside is the first draft of an unpublished manuscript called The Eye Begins to See that...follows A Wrinkle in Time’s well-known teen heroine, Meg Murry, into middle age...” ~John MacMillan for the Smith Alumnae Quarterly www.smith.edu/news-events/...

We need the prayer of words, yes; the words are the path to contemplation; but the deepest communion with God is beyond words, on the other side of silence. Walking on Water

The more limited the literature we give to our children, the more limited their capacity to respond, and therefore, in their turn, to create. A Circle of Quiet

Today's edition of #ireadbannedbooks - L'Engle @tesserwell.bsky.social is one of my favorite authors. The trilogy of books in this series are some of my favorites of her work. The book my wonderfully amazing 5th grade teacher read aloud to us was banned (and still remains on some banned lists).

A Wrinkle in Time (pb and audio) and A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel are part of Amazon’s Prime Day deals on October 7–8! However you shop -- whether you click, tap, or browse in person at you local, independent bookstore -- thank you for being a reader!

“A Wrinkle In Time encouraged me to not give up on scientific curiosity, despite the fact that I would never succeed as a proper scientist.” ~Caitlin Cory for Mind Matters mindmatters.ai/2021/06/a-wr...

I had yet to learn the faithfulness of doubt. This is often assumed by the judgmental to be faithlessness, but it is not; it is a prerequisite for a living faith. Walking on Water

A child is not afraid of new ideas, does not have to worry about the status quo or rocking the boat, is willing to sail into uncharted waters. Those tired old editors who had a hard time understanding A Wrinkle in Time assumed that children couldn’t understand it either. Walking on Water

We tend not to see the peacemakers in our own path, or the opportunities for peacemaking which are presented to us each day. The Irrational Season

So let me not make my passion for words into a golden calf, either, or I may fail to recognize the wonder of language changing as it emerges out of the experience of living. Penguins and Golden Calves

From the archives: “A quilt is not a thing that can be made in isolation. In a Circle of Quiet (1972), Madeleine said that stories “come out of a response to what is happening to us and the world in which we live.” This quilt is like that.” J. A. Neilsen www.madeleinelengle.com/guest-blog-p...

Compassion means to suffer with, but it doesn’t mean to get lost in the suffering, so that it becomes exclusively one’s own. I tend to do this, to replace the person for whom I am feeling compassion with myself. A Circle of Quiet

If our vocabulary dwindles to a few shopworn words, we are setting ourselves up for takeover by a dictator. When language becomes exhausted, our freedom dwindles—we cannot think; we do not recognize danger; injustice strikes us as no more than “the way things are.” Walking on Water

"This is a wise and inspiring book that should be in every artist’s library.” ~Vinita Hampton Wright, Walking on Water review

Might we say that the opposite of love is power, rather than hate? The Rock that is Higher

I write for...that part of us that is aware and open and courageous...that part of us that isn't afraid to explore the mythical depths, that vast part of ourselves we know little about and which we often fear because we can't manipulate or control it. That's where art is born. The Irrational Season

“When I read A Wrinkle in Time as a kid, for example, I closed that book, full of feeling. That’s what inspiration is to me.” ~Rebecca Stead in conversation with Erin Entrada Kelly, Publisher’s Weekly www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

I do not think that it is naïve to think that it is the tiny, particular acts of love and joy which are going to swing the balance, rather than general, impersonal charities. A Circle of Quiet

Madeleine died on this day in 2006. "Each tree and leaf and star show how the universe is part of this one cry, That every life is noted and is cherished, and nothing loved is ever lost or perished. " A Ring of Endless Light

As with all my books, Starfish was more rewritten than written, and with each subsequent book the need to rewrite becomes more rather than less. As the writer struggles to grow in knowledge of techniques, characterization, theme, more and more work becomes necessary. Walking on Water

To write a story is an act of Naming; in reading about a protagonist I can grow along with, I myself am more named. Walking on Water

“[L'Engle] approached writing as a spiritual discipline, viewing creativity as a form of participation in God’s ongoing creation." raptinterviews.com/articles/mad...

If someone looks at me with concern, asking, “Are you all right? You look really terrible.” ...I’ll immediately begin to feel miserable. But if that same person says to me instead, “Madeleine, you look wonderful. I’ve never seen you looking better,” I’ll feel wonderful. The Rock that is Higher

"Prayer was never meant to be magic." "Then why bother with it?" "Because it's an act of love." A RING OF ENDLESS LIGHT Also, gun control now.

Throwback to this fun fact from Jeopardy host Ken Jennings!

“My grandmother...would have uttered a choice Anglo-Saxon expletive—something she did only in the most extreme circumstances—and whipped off a blistering response. I almost felt sorry for the teacher as I imagined her receiving it.” Charlotte Jones Voiklis nonprofitquarterly.org/madeleine-le...

God is no respecter of persons and often chooses people to prophecy who do not seem only unqualified, but who tell us so many things we don’t want to hear that we close our ears. The Rock that is Higher

The rational intellect doesn't have a great deal to do with love, and it doesn't have a great deal to do with art. A Circle of Quiet

Madeleine's father covered WWI as a journalist and then served in the artillery division when the US joined the effort. He wrote two books about these experiences, collected together in one volume for the first time.

But whatever our experience is, God is there, in it with us, as God was in the fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. That isn’t really an answer, but it’s all we’re going to get, and it’s enough...God is still there. The Rock that is Higher

Whether a story is to be marketed for grownups or for children, the writer writes for himself, out of his own need, otherwise the story will lack reality...if it is totally honest and unself-pitying, then it will have the valid ring of truth. Walking on Water

“There always have been and there always will be people who have been corrupted into enjoying any excuse for cruelty.” The Arm of the Starfish