"A book comes and says, "Write me." My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate"
About this Quote
The line "which is never good enough" is the quiet engine here. It's not false modesty so much as a description of the gap every serious novelist lives with: the ideal book that insists on being written versus the compromised object that reality allows. That tension gives the quote its moral charge. L'Engle isn't romanticizing inspiration as a lightning bolt. She's insisting on craft as fidelity - showing up, listening, translating.
The subtext also pushes back against the industrial notion of writing as content production. The book doesn't say "Monetize me" or "Brand me"; it asks to be served. "Collaborate" is the modern word with old-school implications: humility, revision, surrender to the work's internal logic. Coming from a writer whose fiction often braided science, faith, and ethics, it tracks that she frames art as relationship rather than conquest.
Context matters: L'Engle wrote across genres and for young readers without condescension. Treating the book as a living interlocutor is a way of defending imaginative seriousness in a culture eager to treat children's literature - and women who write it - as lesser.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
L'Engle, Madeleine. (2026, January 16). A book comes and says, "Write me." My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/a-book-comes-and-says-write-me-my-job-is-to-try-134113/
Chicago Style
L'Engle, Madeleine. "A book comes and says, "Write me." My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/a-book-comes-and-says-write-me-my-job-is-to-try-134113/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"A book comes and says, "Write me." My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough, but all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/a-book-comes-and-says-write-me-my-job-is-to-try-134113/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2026.
