75 quotes
I've always believed that there is no subject that is taboo for the writer.
Acceptance Speech for the Margaret Edwards Award (1998)
I have advice for people who want to write.
Penguins and Golden Calves (2003)
Often the only way to look clearly at this extraordinary universe is through fantasy, fairy tale, myth.
Acceptance Speech for the Margaret Edwards Award (1998)
A Wrinkle in Time was almost never published. You can't name a major publisher who didn't reject it.
Penguins and Golden Calves (2003)
Of course. It's all been said better before. If I thought I had to say it better than anyone else, I'd never start.
A Circle of Quiet (1972)
Kids don't hesitate to ask questions. And it's a great honor to have the kids say, "Your books have made me trust you."
Penguins and Golden Calves (2003)
Faith is for the part of the story that superficially isn’t believable.
The Rock that Is Higher (1993)
Detachment and involvement: the artist must have both. The link between them is compassion. It has taken me over fifty years to get a glimmer of what this means.
A Circle of Quiet (1972)
A book, too, can be a star, “explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,” a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.
The Expanding Universe (1963)
I endeavor
To hold the I as one only for the cloud
Of which I am a fragment, yet to which I'm vowed
To be responsible.
It has often struck me with awe that some of the most deeply religious people I know have been, on the surface, atheists.
Walking on Water (1980)
We do live, all of us, on many different levels, and for most artists the world of imagination is more real than the world of the kitchen sink.
A Circle of Quiet (1972)
The concentration of a small child at play is analogous to the concentration of the artist of any discipline. In real play, which is real concentration, the child is not only outside time, he is outside himself.
A Circle of Quiet (1972)
It is so great a thing to be an infinitesimal part
of this immeasurable orchestra the music bursts the heart,
And from this tiny plosion all the fragments join:
Joy orders the disunity until the song is one.
Certainly that mild quip of the elderly man wouldn't shock anybody today. We might laugh appreciatively at his wit, but that would be the extent of our reaction.
Acceptance Speech for the Margaret Edwards Award (1998)
You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.
A Wrinkle in Time (1962)
The changes are not going to stop. They are going to continue and accelerate. Like it or not.
Acceptance Speech for the Margaret Edwards Award (1998)
I wrote because I wanted to know what everything was about.
Penguins and Golden Calves (2003)
I believe this as strongly now as I did then. Most of what is best in writing isn’t done deliberately.
The Expanding Universe (1963)
The truth of a story is what the novelist strives for, and quite often the writer is taken down strange and unexpected paths on this search.
The Rock that Is Higher (1993)