Two-Part Invention; The Story of a Marriage

by Madeleine L'Engle

Rating: 4/5
Grade: C - 14 and up (for cancer, death, drugs)

I have just started Two-Part Invention; The Story of a Marriage by Madeleine L'Engle. It is a memoir about her marriage with her actor husband. Enjoying the read so far, and just wanted to write down bits of it I especially liked:

pg. 18:

"We do not know, and can not tell when the spirit is with us. Great talent or small, it makes no difference. We are caught within our own skins, our own sensibitlites; we never know if our technique has been adequate to the vision."

pg 100:

"The growth of love is not a staight line, but a series of hills and valleys. I suspect that in every good marriage there are times when love seems to be over. Sometimes those desert lines are simply the only way to the next oasis, which is far more lush and beautiful after the desert crossing than it could possibly have been without it."

pg. 103:

"But the wonderful thing, whether we are together or apart, is to know that he is in the world, and we belong together. And what I must learn is to love with all of me, giving all of me, and yet remain whole in myself. Any other kind of love is too demanding of the other; it takes, rather than gives. To love so completely that you lose yourself in another person is not good. You are giving a weight, not the sense of lightness and light that loving someone should give. To love wholly, generously, and yet to retain the core that makes you you. "