"WalMart’s amazing; they find a way to cheapen everything."

- Lewis Black. The Daily Show

Word by word...

“We all begin to read as close readers. Even before we learn to read, the process of being read aloud to, and of listening, is one in which we are taking in one word after another, one phrase at a time, in which we are paying attention to whatever each word or phrase is transmitting. Word by word is how we learn to hear and then read, which seems only fitting, because it is how the books were are reading were written in the first place.

“The more we read, the foster we can perform that magic trick of seeing how the letters have been combined into words that have meaning. The more we read, the more we comprehend, the more likely we are to discover new ways to read, each one tailored to the reason why we are reading a particular book.

“At first, the thrill of our own brand-new expertise is all we ask or expect from Dick and Jane. But soon we being to ask what else those marks on the page can give us. We begin to want information, entertainment, invention, even truth and beauty. We concentrate, we skim, we skip words, put down the book and daydream, start over, reread. We finish a book and return to it years later to see what we might have missed, or the ways in which time and age have affected our understanding.”

- Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose

Sue Grafton has some zingers

"Too many women mistake a man's hostility for wit and his silence for depth."

- Sue Grafton, L is for Lawless

I love what Loquacious posted about Madeleine

"Godspeed, Madeleine L'Engle. If there's a there there, you know what to do. Your work is cut out for you. Be Named and know that I love you."

I liked this posting by Gingersnap as well:

"When she visited my small grade school in the late 80s, she was the first famous person and author that I had ever met, and it was quite a wonderful shock to discover that she was so human. That, more than anything else, made me believe that I actually might be able to be a writer someday. One of the best days of my childhood."

I had to totally agree with Kanolia, who posted:

"And there dies yet another piece of my childhood."

I was touched by Arctic Woman's confession:

"Why am I crying? Madeline L'Engle, you were so important to me. You taught 8-year-old me that the world was amazing, that science was interesting, and that I - using my mind - could be the hero of my own story. Thank you for all your gifts."

And this, from a writer identifying his/herself only as CMYK, was just funny and cool:

"I remember, during one of my many re-reads of A Wrinkle In Time, I sat down and thought about a tesseract. I visualized everything - the square, the cube, the cube squared - and for one brief perfect moment I got it. I could see the whole thing inside my head, backwards and forwards, and I understood how it worked. Then it slipped right back out of my skull, because a tesseract is an awfully big thing to stuff into a child's head. But for the moment I got it, it was awesome."

Source: http://www.metafilter.com/64499/A-In-Time

Quotes from Madeleine L'Engle on Love & Marriage

-- "To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take."

-- "If we commit ourselves to one person for life, this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation."

(Both quotes from The Irrational Season, 47)

-- "Love isn't how you feel, it's what you do."

(Wind in the Door, 118)

-- "When we make ourselves vulnerable, we do open ourselves to pain, sometimes excruciating pain. The more people we love, the more we are liable to be hurt, and not only by the people we love, but for the people we love."

(Penguins and Golden Calves, 20)

Saying goodbye to Madeleine L'Engle

I just read the news today:

Madeleine L'Engle's books were an integral part of my childhood.

Like Vicky, from the Austin series, I was the sort of child who deeply analyzed everyone and everything in my surroundings, looking for some secret clue about how things worked.

Like Meg, from her Wrinkle in Time series, I went through an "ugly duckling" period while I was outgrowing my child-self. I also had a precocious little brother, who was somewhat like Charles Wallace. At the age of nine, I even went so far as to memorize the rune from A Swiftly Turning Planet, as I shall prove now by writing it entirely from memory:

"At Tara, in this fateful hour
I call on heaven with all its power
And the sun with its brightness
And the snow with its whiteness
And the fire with all the strength it hath
And the lightening with its rapid wrath
And the winds with swiftness along their path
And the sea with its deepness
And the rocks with their steepness
And the earth with its starkness
All these I place, by God's almighty help and grace
Between myself and the powers of darkness."

In college, I read L'Engle's adult novels and nonfiction books, and even amassed an entire collection of Madeleine L'Engle quotes. Despite the vast difference in our ages, L'Engle always seemed to be pondering the very issues that were becoming vitally important to me.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from Madeleine L'Engle:

-- “The artist’s response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write. Not to impose restrictive rules, but to rejoice in pattern and meaning. For there is something in all artists which rejects coincidence and accident…We must meet the precariousness of the universe without self-pity, and with dignity and courage.” - Madeleine L’Engle

-- “There is little character or loveliness in the face of someone who has shunned risk, avoided suffering and rejected life…” - Madeleine L’Engle

-- “To learn to love is to be stripped of all love, until you are wholly without love. Because until you have gone, naked and afraid, into this cold, dark place, you will not know that you are wholly within love."

- "There are three ways that you can live life – three again – remember that great writers always do things in threes.

"You can live life as though it’s all a cosmic accident; we’re nothing but an irritating skin disease on the face of the earth. Maybe you can live your life as though everything’s a bad joke. I can’t.

"Or you can go out at night and look at the stars and think, yes, they were created by a prime mover and so were you, but he’s aloof perfection, impassible, indifferent to his creation. He doesn’t care, or, if he cares, he only cares about the ultimate end of his creation… You don’t matter to him, I don’t matter to him, except possibly as the means to an end. I can’t live that way either.

"Then there’s a third way: to live as though you believe that the power behind the universe is a power of love, a love so great that all of us really do matter to him. He loves us so much that every single one of our lives has meaning; he really does know about the fall of the sparrow, and the hairs on our head are really counted. That’s the only way I can live."

Sewn by the Feeling

And, here's another one:
I am in love with this song, too!

The Feeling - Sewn

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Alana Davis

Okay... this is not a quote - but I love this singer!
And, her lyrics demonstrate an intimate awareness of "the vast, untidy sea of truth."

Alana Davis- Blame It On Me

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The Magic of Reading

"Reading is one of the main things I do. Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person...

"Reading is escape and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real."

- Nora Ephron, I Feel Bad About My Neck