Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

They say marriage will change you but it didn't change me. Being in love changed me.

I change the world, the world changes me.

Most critics write critiques which are by the authors they write critiques about. That would not be so bad, but then most authorswrite works which are by the critics who write critiques about them.

We're as much influenced by everybody else as they are by us, if they are. It's just all a part of the big thing.

I'd spent my whole adult life considering myself an independent entity, my life filled by work and friends and family. Suddenly I had a male partner, someone I woke up with and went to sleep with every night.

I saw what was wonderful about human companionship. Before that, I was quite content to be alone, to be a solitary wandering person, and I thought I always would be. Love changed that.

Honestly, I think people change after meeting someone you love.

A being connected with other beings cannot perform his own activities without taking the activities of others into account. For they are the indispensable conditions of the realization of his tendencies. When he moves he stirs them and reciprocally.

Everything connects to everything; therefore, as we change, the world cannot but change with us.

I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.

Everyone alters and is altered by everyone else. We are all the time taking in portions of one another or else reacting against them, and by these involuntary acquisitions and repulsions modifying our natures.

We are here not only to transform the world but also to be transformed.

Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable. We cannot know at the outset how the relationship will affect us. Like a chemical mixture, if one of us is changed, both of us will be. Will we grow in self-actualization, or will it destroy us? The one thing we can be certain of is that if we let ourselves fully into the relationship for good or evil, we will not come out unaffected.

The two sexes mutually corrupt and improve each other.

A woman can't change a man because she loves him. A man changes himself because he loves her.

What's the use of falling in love if you both remain inertly as you were?

Trying to hold onto any relationship as it was, keeps you from the joyous adventure of what it can become.

I think that when somebody, when people really have a connection with each other, they change each other. You become a different person, hopefully a better person, because of it.

The small are always dependent on the great; they are "small" precisely because they think they are independent. The great thinker is one who can hear what is greatest in the work of other "greats" and who can transform it in an original manner.

Be blessed. And just as you are transforming your own life, may you transform the lives of those around you. When they ask, do not forget to give. When they knock at your door, be sure to open it. When they lose something and come to you, do whatever you can to help them find what they have lost. First, though, ask; knock at the door and find what is missing in your life. A hunter always knows what to expect - eat or be eaten.

Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, word, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches.

No man can possibly know what life means, what the world means, until he has a child and loves it. And then the whole universe changes and nothing will ever again seem exactly as it seemed before.

There is no such thing as living alone, for all living is relationship; but to live without direct relationship demands high intelligence, a swifter and greater awareness for self-discovery.

After love, no one is what they were before.

It was as if, before she'd met him, her blood had circulated grayly around her body, and now ir was all oxygenated and red. She was petrified of becoming the half-alive person she'd been before.