@tesserwell.bsky.social
Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007), author of more than 60 books, including the classic A WRINKLE IN TIME. Curated by granddaughter/executor Charlotte Jones Voiklis
A successful businesswoman had the temerity to ask me about my royalties...When told, she was duly impressed and remarked, “And to think, most people would have had to work so hard for that.” I choked over my tea, not wanting to laugh in her face.
Walking on Water
“At book’s end, readers may agree with L’Engle that ‘the Incarnation is so far beyond our factual comprehension as to be laughable,’ yet her writing will also have broadened their understanding of this mystery.”
-Publishers Weekly, 2001, Bright Evening Star review
I wish the church would be brave enough to acknowledge that there are questions to which, during our mortal lives, we have no answers.
The Rock that is Higher
Success is one of the dirtiest temptations of the devil.
Walking on Water
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.
Madeleine L’Engle Herself
Dance in the Desert comes out tomorrow!
www.instagram.com/p/DOKFuqFDM2j/
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.
A Circle of Quiet
We don’t want to feel less when we have finished a book; we want to feel that new possibilities of being have been opened to us. We don’t want to close a book with a sense that life is totally unfair and that there is no light in the darkness; we want to feel that we have been given illumination.
17.10.2025 12:04 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
“Inside is the first draft of an unpublished manuscript called The Eye Begins to See that...follows A Wrinkle in Time’s well-known teen heroine, Meg Murry, into middle age...”
~John MacMillan for the Smith Alumnae Quarterly
www.smith.edu/news-events/...
We need the prayer of words, yes; the words are the path to contemplation; but the deepest communion with God is beyond words, on the other side of silence.
Walking on Water
The more limited the literature we give to our children, the more limited their capacity to respond, and therefore, in their turn, to create.
A Circle of Quiet
Today's edition of #ireadbannedbooks - L'Engle @tesserwell.bsky.social is one of my favorite authors. The trilogy of books in this series are some of my favorites of her work. The book my wonderfully amazing 5th grade teacher read aloud to us was banned (and still remains on some banned lists).
08.10.2025 12:51 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
A Wrinkle in Time (pb and audio) and A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel are part of Amazon’s Prime Day deals on October 7–8!
However you shop -- whether you click, tap, or browse in person at you local, independent bookstore -- thank you for being a reader!
“A Wrinkle In Time encouraged me to not give up on scientific curiosity, despite the fact that I would never succeed as a proper scientist.”
~Caitlin Cory for Mind Matters
mindmatters.ai/2021/06/a-wr...
I had yet to learn the faithfulness of doubt. This is often assumed by the judgmental to be faithlessness, but it is not; it is a prerequisite for a living faith.
Walking on Water
A child is not afraid of new ideas, does not have to worry about the status quo or rocking the boat, is willing to sail into uncharted waters. Those tired old editors who had a hard time understanding A Wrinkle in Time assumed that children couldn’t understand it either.
Walking on Water
We tend not to see the peacemakers in our own path, or the opportunities for peacemaking which are presented to us each day.
The Irrational Season
So let me not make my passion for words into a golden calf, either, or I may fail to recognize the wonder of language changing as it emerges out of the experience of living.
Penguins and Golden Calves
From the archives: “A quilt is not a thing that can be made in isolation. In a Circle of Quiet (1972), Madeleine said that stories “come out of a response to what is happening to us and the world in which we live.” This quilt is like that.”
J. A. Neilsen
www.madeleinelengle.com/guest-blog-p...
Compassion means to suffer with, but it doesn’t mean to get lost in the suffering, so that it becomes exclusively one’s own. I tend to do this, to replace the person for whom I am feeling compassion with myself.
A Circle of Quiet
If our vocabulary dwindles to a few shopworn words, we are setting ourselves up for takeover by a dictator. When language becomes exhausted, our freedom dwindles—we cannot think; we do not recognize danger; injustice strikes us as no more than “the way things are.”
Walking on Water
"This is a wise and inspiring book that should be in every artist’s library.”
~Vinita Hampton Wright, Walking on Water review
Might we say that the opposite of love is power, rather than hate?
The Rock that is Higher
I write for...that part of us that is aware and open and courageous...that part of us that isn't afraid to explore the mythical depths, that vast part of ourselves we know little about and which we often fear because we can't manipulate or control it. That's where art is born.
The Irrational Season
“When I read A Wrinkle in Time as a kid, for example, I closed that book, full of feeling. That’s what inspiration is to me.”
~Rebecca Stead in conversation with Erin Entrada Kelly, Publisher’s Weekly
www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...
I do not think that it is naïve to think that it is the tiny, particular acts of love and joy which are going to swing the balance, rather than general, impersonal charities.
A Circle of Quiet
Madeleine died on this day in 2006.
"Each tree and leaf and star show how the universe is part of this one cry,
That every life is noted and is cherished, and nothing loved is ever lost or perished. "
A Ring of Endless Light
As with all my books, Starfish was more rewritten than written, and with each subsequent book the need to rewrite becomes more rather than less. As the writer struggles to grow in knowledge of techniques, characterization, theme, more and more work becomes necessary.
Walking on Water
To write a story is an act of Naming; in reading about a protagonist I can grow along with, I myself am more named.
Walking on Water
“[L'Engle] approached writing as a spiritual discipline, viewing creativity as a form of participation in God’s ongoing creation."
raptinterviews.com/articles/mad...
