Donald Miller Quotes

Many of our attempts to understand Christian faith have only cheapened it. I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me. The little we do understand, that grain of sand our minds are capable of grasping, those ideas such as God is good, God feels, God loves, God knows all, are enough to keep our hearts dwelling on His majesty and otherness forever.

I posted the first three chapters and I had enough people say that chapter two was dragging that I cut it out just before the book went to press. And I'm glad I did. The book is a lot better without it.

I've wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don't want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgment. We don't want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn't remarkable, then we don't have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims instead of grateful participants.

There are things you cannot understand, and you must learn to live with this. Not only must you learn to live with this, you must learn to enjoy this.

I always thought the Bible was more of a salad thing, you know, but it isn't. It's a chocolate thing.

I have friends who are writers, but we don't tend to talk about literature very much. It's just not part of my process; I tend to be pretty secretive about what I'm working on.

I love writing books - I really do. If I could just quit everything and work on a book every day, I would love that most.

I asked God to help me understand the story of the forest and what it means to be a tree in that story.

Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself.

If we knew how much God loved us and was for us, we’d talk to Him all day long.

I think writers would do better to consider that idea [to write to yourself], because you know yourself really well, and you never know your demographic fully. You only get into trouble if you try to please somebody you don't really understand.

...if I do not introduce people to Jesus, then I don't believe Jesus is an important person. It doesn't matter what I say.

If you want to bond with your friends, do something very hard with them, something that you won't be able to do alone.

It is when people do not allow God to show up through them ... that the world collapses in on itself.

And I found Jesus very disturbing, very straightforward. He wasn't diplomatic, and yet I felt like if I met Him, He would really like me. Don, I can't explain how freeing that was, to realize that if I met Jesus, He would like me. I never felt like that about some of the Christians on the radio. I always thought if I met those people they would yell at me. But it wasn't like that with Jesus.

People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen.

Sometimes the things we want most in life are the things that will kill us.

I listened so hard because it felt like, while she was telling me stories, she was massaging my soul, letting me know that I was not alone, that I will never have to be alone, that there are friends and family and churches and coffee shops. I was not going to be cast into space.

If you buy the website, maybe you'll do something with it. But so far I haven't; we'll see.

Everybody wants to be somebody fancy. Even if they're shy.

A story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.

Half the time I don't know what I'm trying to say.

Let probability and sample size do the heavy lifting.

It made me wonder if the reasons our lives seem so muddled is because we keep walking into scenes in which we, along with the people around us, have no clear idea what we want.

When you write, you're alone in a room. And when someone reads a book, they're alone in a room, too, usually. It's a really intimate exchange. And so people ask me where I get the boldness to talk about this or that, but I didn't feel like it required any sort of courage, because I was alone. Sometimes it feels weird for people to read it.

What I believe is not what I say I believe; what I believe is what I do.

Flattery has a short battery life, but reminding people they are amazing and precious and wanted and works of art can truly change their lives.

Truth grew in my mind like a fungus, and though I tried to sleep it out, there was no resisting the epiphanies.

Suffering ceases to be suffering when you have a redemptive perspective.

Most of us are waiting. We're waiting for something interesting to happen. And I think we're going to wait forever if we don't do something more interesting with our lives.

In exchange for our humility and willingness to accept the charity of God, we are given a kingdom. And a beggar's kingdom is better than a proud man's delusion.

Much of the time I’ve spent trying to impress people has been a waste. The reality is people are impressed with all kinds of things: intelligence, power, money, charm, talent, and so on. But the ones we tend to stay in love with are, in the long run, the ones who do a decent job loving us back.

I didn't know how story worked. So, when writing the screenplay, people introduced me to the science of it. And I'm grateful. I'll probably use that information for the rest of my career, in terms of writing novels or writing stories. And then, of course, to help me live a better story, a more meaningful story

Your life is a blank page. You write on it.

It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll. This is how God does things.

God made a whole beautiful earth and decided to put you in it, to experience all of this beauty. You can't do that watching television all the time.

Being a Christian is more like falling in love than understanding a series of ideas.

Sometimes the story we're telling the world isn't half as endearing as the one that lives inside us.

And if these mountains had eyes, they would wake to find two strangers in their fences, standing in admiration as a breathing red pours its tinge upon earth's shore. These mountains, which have seen untold sunrises, long to thunder praise but stand reverent, silent so that man's weak praise should be given God's attention.

I'm not a pastor; I've never been on staff at a church.

I am something of a recluse by nature. I am that cordless screwdriver that has to charge for twenty hours to earn ten minutes use. I need that much downtime.

I tend to write first drafts that are incredibly cognitive, very rational, very boring. They come off as justification. Like, 'This is my idea and here's all the reasons that it's right.' It doesn't make for very compelling reading.

The mountains themselves call us into greater stories.

If you don't feel free and be yourself, you can't connect. Find people who accept your quirks. They'll heal your soul.

Leave. Roll the world around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful world, isn't it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don't worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.

My Sunday school teachers had turned Bible narrative into children's fables. They talked about Noah and the ark because the story had animals in it. They failed to mention that this was when God massacred all of humanity.

The real voice is stiller and smaller and seems to know, without confusion, the difference between right and wrong and the subtle delineation between the beautiful and profane. It's not an agitated voice, but ever patient as though it approves a million false starts. The voice I am talking about is a deep water of calming wisdom.

The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won't make a story meaningful, it won't make a life meaningful either.