Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it? Yes. Mrs. Whatsit said. You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.

I don't think anybody is anybody else's moral compass. Maybe listening to my music is not the best idea if you live a very constricted life. Or maybe it is.

I think theatricality is just one way of performing. I don't think it's a better way or the way, but it's my way.

I never set out to make a movie that was everything to everybody; if that were the case, we could all just take a picture of a tree and agree that the tree is beautiful and move on with our lives. I wouldn't even need to show up.

All of us want to live, and that is absolutely natural. However, we should learn from childhood on to choose our best way to die. If we don't do that, we end up spending our days like a dog, only in search of harbour, food and expressing a blind loyalty to his owner in return. That isn't enough to make our lives have a meaning.

I don't want to look exactly the same in everything I do. And if I'm not identifiable, then that can be a blessing or a curse. But I'm fine with it. Because at the end of the day, I'm still working, and I'm enjoying what I do.

I definitely prefer to write under my own volition and see what happens.

At one point, I just decided that it might be more creatively rewarding to put my time into writing on stuff that I could really be proud of rather than trying to get a one-episode part on 'Modern Family' or something.

I just wouldn't enjoy standing there like a paper doll, having someone else stick paper dresses on me. That would be no fun.

You write your life story by the choices you make.

I love writing, it's the center of my life. If you don't love what you do, you'd better find something else to love. Otherwise, you don't have a reason for living.

['Fire and Rain'] is sort of almost uncomfortably close. Almost confessional. The reason I could write a song like that at that point, and probably couldn't now, is that I didn't have any sense that anyone would hear it. I started writing the song while I was in London...and I was totally unknown.... So I assumed that they would never be heard. I could just write or say anything I wanted. Now I'm very aware, and I have to deal with my stage fright and my anxiety about people examining or judging it. The idea that people will pass judgment on it is not a useful thought.

The truly adult view [...] is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it. And we can make it very wonderful indeed.

A writer writes what interests him and what he can manage, and what he can make live, as Flannery O'Connor said. So my reaction to someone saying "You must!" or "You should!" or even "Hey, why don't you?" is basically to sort of shrug and politely walk off and do whatever I want to do. It's nobody else's business, really, and even if I happened to agree with one of those "musts" or "shoulds" what would I do about it, if my heart wasn't in it?

If there's an idea I think is really good and I feel like I can write it, then I'll do it.

Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you make it for them.

Your life is a blank page. You write on it.

All worthwhile writing... comes from an individual vision, privately pursued.

God writes the story of our lives with the pen strokes of our own free choices.

Writing music is really personal, and it's a really exciting thing to participate in because represents the full creative process: It feels like something is coming from nothing.

For some men, nothing is Written unless they Write it.

We get to design what we want to see in the world rather than doing what other people think should be done.

You really write the books you want to write. You can't take into consideration anything that anybody has said about you in the past, or what they'll say about you in the future.

You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.

I'm not trying to write for the masses. I don't care.