75 quotes
What a child doesn’t realize until he is grown is that in responding to fantasy, fairly tale, and myth he is responding to what Erich Fromm calls the one universal language, the one and only language in the world that cuts across all barriers of time, place, race, and culture.
The Expanding Universe (1963)
When a promise is broken, the promise still remains. In one way or another, we are all unfaithful to each other, and physical unfaithfulness is not the worst kind there is.
The Irrational Season (1977)
A great piece of literature does not try to coerce you to believe it or agree with it. A great piece of literature simply is.
It is a vehicle of truth, but it is not a blueprint, and we tend to confuse the two.
A Circle of Quiet (1972)
The problem is not that it's too difficult for children, but that it's too difficult for grown ups. Much of the world view of Einstein's thinking wasn't being taught when the grown ups were in school, but the children were comfortably familiar with it.
Acceptance Speech for the Margaret Edwards Award (1998)
We each have to say it, to say it in our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn't what human creation is about. It is that we have to try; to put it down in pigment, or words, or musical notations, or we die.
A Circle of Quiet (1972)
How do we teach a child — our own, or those in a classroom — to have compassion: to allow people to be different; to understand that like is not equal; to experiment; to laugh; to love; to accept the fact that the most important questions a human being can ask do not have — or need — answers.
A Circle of Quiet (1972)
I have never served a work as I would like to, but I do try, with each book, to serve to the best of my ability, and this attempt at serving is the greatest privilege and the greatest joy that I know.
The Irrational Season (1977)
What can we give a child when there is nothing left?
All we have, I think, is the truth, the truth that will set him free, not limited, provable truth, but the open, growing, evolving truth that is not afraid.
A Circle of Quiet (1972)
One reason nearly half my books are for children is the glorious fact that the minds of children are still open to the living word; in the child, nightside and sunside are not yet separated; fantasy contains truths which cannot be stated in terms of proof.
The Irrational Season (1977)
Unless a writer works constantly to improve and refine the tools of his trade they will be useless instruments if and when the moment of inspiration, of revelation, does come. This is the moment when a writer is spoken through, the moment that a writer must accept with gratitude and humility, and then attempt, as best he can, to communicate to others.
Suddenly she knew. She knew! Love.
A Wrinkle in Time (1962)
We rebel against the impossible. I sense a wish in some professional religion-mongers to make God possible, to make him comprehensible to the naked intellect, domesticate him so that he's easy to believe in.
The Irrational Season (1977)
Life is full of questions, and we are free to ask them, to understand, occasionally, that we are not going to get an answer, or at least not the answer we expect, and then we are called to move on. But I believe that God encourages us to ask questions.
The Rock that Is Higher (1993)
Here we are living in a world of "identity crises," and most of us have no idea what an identity is.
Half the problem is that an identity is something which must be understood intuitively, rather than in terms of provable fact. An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy.
A Circle of Quiet (1972)
You can't be a writer if you're not a reader. It's the great writers who teach us how to write. The third thing is to write. Just write a little bit every day. Even if it's for only half an hour — write, write, write.
Penguins and Golden Calves (2003)