Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

Someone once said to me, 'Some of us choose to live with a lifeboat just a little bit out of our reach.' I'd like to reach a point where I no longer bullshit myself. I think that's the natural human condition - to lie to yourself. Because the truth is painful.

There are lots of things that you can brush under the carpet about yourself until you're faced with somebody whose needs won't be put off.

I was living a life of a lie. And I was doing a lot of things, that hurt a lot of people. And stripping away denial and rationalization you start coming to the truth of who you really are and that can be very ugly.

We have a fear of facing ourselves. That is the obstacle. Experiencing the innermost core of our existence is very embarrassing to a lot of people. A lot of people turn to something that they hope will liberate them without their having to face themselves. That is impossible. We can't do that. We have to be honest with ourselves. We have to see our gut, our excrement, our most undesirable parts. We have to see them. That is the foundation of warriorship, basically speaking. Whatever is there, we have to face it, we have to look at it, study it, work with it and practice meditation with it.

A part of me likes to pretty up feelings that aren't so pretty.

We are a culture of people who've bought into the idea that if we stay busy enough, the truth of our lives won't catch up with us.

I think all of us make the mistake of thinking we're going to change people when we get together. But we're not. People are who they are. And people change in their own time.

I think Oprah's [winfrey] learned from me that it's OK to be harsh on people because in one's harshness you can see transformation happen right before your very eyes.

Don't fool people to think you are better than who you are. Instead of trying to act changed, pray that you will be changed.

My appointed work is to awaken the divine nature that is within. This is my calling, to open doors of truth and make people think, to arouse others from their apathetic and lethargic state, and get them to seek out for themselves the inner peace which dwells within. This is the extent of my undertaking, I can do no more. The rest I leave to a higher power.

It's so easy and comfortable to lie to yourself. Success is to become who you are. I think Hollywood thinks in a totally different way. But I think that as a human being, and not only an actress, that's really how you lead a successful life.

I've learned from her [ Oprah Winfrey] really how to stand in one's truth, how if you just simply are who you are, you know, you're heavy, you're thin, you're happy, you're sad - if you just speak your truth as it comes into your mind, then that's what people relate to.

When I was in my early twenties, I fell in love at least 20 times a day. You have to be with someone where you think: if the world was full of people like you, I could not be monogamous. As you get older, you get to know yourself a little more. The older you get, the more you realize what you need. And you also realize how your choice in relationships is influenced by how you grew up. Now I feel like I've explored the dynamic of how I grew up, and I'm free to find someone who's really going to be a wonderful companion.

.. if you asked most people whether they believed in love or not, they’d probably say they didn’t. Yet that’s not necessarily what they truly think. It’s just the way they defend themselves against what they want. They believe in it, but pretend they don’t until they’re allowed to. Most people would throw away all their cynicism if they could. The majority just never gets the chance.

A lot of us are too busy focusing on what we think people want to hear, as opposed to just saying what's in our hearts.

We can use the romantic relationship as a microcosmic example. Until you really understand the other person and where they're coming from and you understand yourself and how you contribute to things, you can never make that relationship better. And I think sometimes people don't understand how much these things are related.

I think a lot of people, when they read about a woman who acknowledges her sexuality and her feelings, get really scared. They say they want to be fearless, but in reality they're terrified. If they acknowledge their deepest feelings, they might have to change their lives.

As a woman, you feel like you can change the person, but I don't think that's the way it works.

The song "No Fairy Tale" tells my story. Going through the hard things leads to a richer life than just trying to make everything perfect, or worse, pretending things are good when they don't feel right. I've done that more than enough times.

What makes me happy about the show, and what I hope people take away from it is: "Just be yourself." I know that's supremely corny, but I really think that just being honest with yourself and being honest with everyone around you is the best way to live.

It can sometimes make people fold into themselves and kind of run away, but I think in this case these characters are being forced to face issues and emotions, feelings, that they have. So it kind of forces them to face it head on, which I think is a really interesting dynamic. And I think it should be interesting and probably a good thing for the relationship.

Before my marriage, I didn’t think about all the obligations that were awaiting me. My experience has proved useful and I think that I have a natural propensity to feel compassion for people and their problems.

If you catch somebody doing something wrong, he will just cringe away and curl up. He will not listen anymore. Instead, he will think of how he can counterattack.

Don't confront me with my failures, I had not forgotten them.

I'd always thought telling the truth to other people was hard, but maybe that was a snap compared to telling the truth to yourself. Sometimes we just refused to know what we knew.