Because we fail to listen to each other's stories, we are becoming a fragmented human race.

We turn to stories and pictures and music because they show us who and what and why we are.

The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.

I don't know if they're really like everybody else, or if they're able to pretend they are.

Just write a little bit every day. Even if it's for only half an hour — write, write, write.

In our dreams we are able to fly . . . and that is a remembering of how we were meant to be.

Come t'e' picciol fallo amaro morso! Dante. What grievous pain a little fault doth give thee!

Artists of all disciplines must be willing to go into the dark, let go control, be surprised.

Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind.

But my memories are like a fire in winter—whenever I'm cold I can warm my hands at them. —Ditta

When we can play with the unself-conscious concentration of a child, this is: art: prayer: love.

Only Christ can free us from the prison of legalism, and then only if we are willing to be freed.

It is possible to suffer and despair an entire lifetime and still not give up the art of laughter.

Following Christ has nothing to do with success as the world sees success. It has to do with love.

To create a work of art, great or small, is work, hard work, and work requires discipline and order.

Sometimes when we have to speak suddenly we come closer to the truth than when we have time to think.

I'm apt to get drunk on words...Ontology: the word about the essence of things; the word about being.

'A Wrinkle in Time' was almost never published. You can't name a major publisher who didn't reject it.

If you're too happy about anything, fate usually gives you a good sock in the jaw and knocks you down.

To be a witness means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist.

You've got to accept the fact that you are basically not teaching a subject, you are teaching children

prayer is whenever we consciously try to get in contact with the numinous, the ineffable, the marvelous.

When we believe in the impossible, it becomes possible, and we can do all kinds of extraordinary things.

I would like to travel light on this journey of life, to get rid of the encumbrances I acquire each day.

Compassion is nothing one feels with the intellect alone. Compassion is particular; it is never general.

To grow up is to find the small part you are playing in the extraordinary drama written by somebody else.

Refusing to accept God's love because we're unworthy - of course we're unworthy! - is another golden calf.

If you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you.

We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.

When a bride insists on telling her lover everything, I suspect she is looking for a father, not a husband.

A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.

That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along.

We do not have to understand in order to believe that behind the mystery and the fascination there is love.

Unlearning is the choice, conscious or unconscious, of any real artist. And it is the true sign of maturity.

I wish that we worried more about asking the right questions instead of being so hung up on finding answers.

When the bright angel dominates, out comes a great work of art, a Michelangelo David or a Beethoven symphony.

It does not matter that we cannot fathom this mystery. The only real problem comes when we think that we have.

If we are not willing to fail we will never accomplish anything. All creative acts involve the risk of failure.

We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledging that they cannot take us all the way.

An artist is someone who cannot rest, who can never rest as long as there is one suffering creature in the world.

There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation.

Reading is a creative activity. You have to visualize the characters, you have to hear what the voices sound like.

And sometimes when we listen, we are led into places we do not expect, into adventures we do not always understand.

If she could give love to IT perhaps it would shrivel up and die, for she was sure that IT could not withstand love.

Oh child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the affect of extreme complication. -Aunt Beast

Thinking I'm a moron gives people something to feel smug about," Charles Wallace said. "Why should I disillusion them?

With each book I write, I become more and more convinced that the books have a life of their own, quite apart from me.

I am also four, and twelve, and fifteen, and twenty-three, and thirty-one, and forty-five and . . . and . . . and . . .

There is little character or loveliness in the face of someone who has shunned risk, avoided suffering and rejected life

When I am constantly running there is no time for being. When there is no time for being there is no time for listening.

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