Madeleine L'Engle on Joy

“An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy.”

“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.”

“It is so great a thing to be an infinitesimal part of this immeasurable orchestra the music bursts the heart, And from this tiny plosion all the fragments join: Joy orders the disunity until the song is one.”

“When a child who has been conceived in love is born to a man and a woman, the joy of that birth sings throughout the universe. The joy of writing or painting is much the same, and the insemination comes not from the artist himself but from his relationship with those he loves, with the whole world.”