DISCOVERING WHO YOU ARE

'...Elwood was changed. Closer. At the demonstration, he had felt somehow closer to himself.'
Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys, p.35.

THE CHALLENGE OF CHANGE

'...maybe you cannot ever really walk away from the things you most want to walk away from.'

Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men, p.66.

HOW EACH STAGE MAKES THE WHOLE

'I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child I am always a child. Because I was one a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be. Because I was once a rebellious student, there is and always will be in me the student crying out for reform.

This does to mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any these ages, the perpetual student, the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide: my past is part of what makes the present Madeleine and must not be denied or rejected or forgotten.'

Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet, p.200.

GOD FEELS

'One hot afternoon the fire siren rang and Quinn went with the firemen to the top of a steep hill where a car was burning; the flames were completely out of control, and inside the inferno was an entire family, a mother, father, and four children.

At his seminary, Quinn had been taught that God, being perfect, is impassible and cannot suffer. That evening he stormed, "If God didn't care, then I don't want him,"

I cried out, "Of course he cared! He was there in that burning car. If he wasn't, then he isn't God."

General compassion is useless. An aloof, general god is useless. Unless we, too, are in that burning car, we are useless.

It is still taught in some seminaries that it is a heresy to think that God can suffer with us. But what does the incarnation show us but the ultimate act of particularity? This is what compassion is all about.'

Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet, p.193.

SEX NEEDS UNIQUENESS

'What concerns me most in the present prevalent freedom - no, not freedom, license, which is a very different thing - about the act of sex, is blunting the particular. If bedding becomes a series of one night stands, it becomes a general thing-in-itself, instead of a very particular act between two particular, unique, irreproducible, irreplaceable persons. When it becomes a thing-in-itself, it is reduced to the de-personalising realm of the general..'

Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet, p.169.

THE EVIL OF NOT FORGIVING

'It may be infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be a moment of passion: the latter is the heart's choice. It is spiritual murder, the worst, to hate, to brood over the feeling that excludes, that, in our microcosm, kills the image, the idea of hatred.'

George Macdonald in Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet, p.158.

THE IMPORTANCE OF STRUCTURE

'...the students talked loudly about wanting to be free to dance, to make love, to be themselves. So do I. So we left literature and talked about the body, and I kept asking questions: what is it in you which gives you freedom? Finally one of the young men, with great reluctance, pulled out the word: skeleton. It is our bones, our structure, which frees us to dance, to make love. Without our structure we would be an imprisoned, amorphous blob of flesh, incapable of response. The amoeba has a minimum of structure, but I doubt it has much fun.'

Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet, p.123.

LOVE IS A POLICY

'Love is not an emotion. It is a policy.'
Hugh Bishop in Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet, p.45.

THE POINT OF WRITING

'...I write to be read.'
Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet, p.20.

THE FUNCTIONN OF AN IMAGE

'An image is something that helps us catch a glimpse of reality.'

Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet, p.17

HUMILITY DEFINED

'Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else.'

Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet, p.11.