Wise Words

I am reading A Circle of Quiet, by Madeleine L’Engle.  How I wish she was still alive!  I would love to sit down with her over lunch and discuss books and ideas.  She had so many wise things to say.  Here is just one of them:  “A great painting, or symphony, or play, doesn’t diminish us, but enlarges us, and we, too, want to make our own cry of affirmation to the power of creation behind the universe.  This surge of creativity has nothing to do with competition, or degree of talent.  When I hear a superb pianist, I can’t wait to get to my own piano, and I play about as well now as I did when I was ten.  A great novel, rather than discouraging me, simply makes me want to write.  This response on the part of any artist is the need to make incarnate the new awareness we have been granted through the genius of someone else.” (p.147)