Nothing really important in life is in the realm of provable fact.
We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.
If we are not willing to fail we will never accomplish anything. All creative acts involve the risk of failure.
We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.
We can’t take any credit for our talents. It’s how we use them that counts.
If you don’t recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are.
The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.
Like it or not, we either add to the darkness of indifference and out-and-out evil which surrounds us or we light a candle to see by.
In art we are once again able to do all the things we have forgotten; we are able to walk on water; we speak to the angels who call us; we move, unfettered, among the stars.
I cannot believe that God wants punishment to go on interminably any more than does a loving parent. The entire purpose of loving punishment is to teach, and it lasts only as long as is needed for the lesson. And the lesson is always love.
The growth of love is not a straight line, but a series of hills and valleys.
When I am grappling with ideas which are radical enough to upset grown-ups, then I am likely to put these ideas into a story which will be marketed for children, because children understand what their parents have rejected and forgotten.
Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
To pray is to listen, to move through my own chattering to God, to that place where I can be silent and listen to what God may have to say.
Severe illness isolates those in close contact with it, because it inevitably narrows the focus of concern. To a certain extent this can lead to healing, but not if the circle of concern is so tight that it cannot be broken into, or out of.
Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. – Mrs. Whatsit.
There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation.
Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind.
I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children’s books ask questions, and make the readers ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone’s universe.
A long-term marriage has to move beyond chemistry to compatibility, to friendship, to companionship. It is certainly not that passion disappears, but that it is conjoined with other ways of love.