Donald Miller Quotes

I used love like money, but love doesn't work like money. It is not a commodity. When we barter with it, we all lose. When the church does not love it's enemies, it fuels their rage. It makes them hate us more.

There are about 360,000 churches in America, so we could mentor a million kids within a short period of time if everyone signed on, which, of course, is a pipedream, but we're going to reach toward that.

Maybe life isn't meaningless...Maybe just YOUR life is meaningless

All the trees are losing their leaves, and not one of them is worried.

Don't let go of your strength or your beauty. It was given to you by God.

If I have a hope, it's that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, “Enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you.”

It was a haunting feeling, the sort of sensation you get when you wonder whether you are two people, the other of which does things you can't explain, bad and terrible things.

The thing about being irresponsible is it's only cute till you are about twenty-two or so, then it becomes a liability. One day you wake up under a pizza box, the television blaring in your bedroom, the laundry piled up over what might be a bedside table, and you ask yourself: 'How did my life get like this? Why don't people like me? Didn't I have a cat and what is that smell?'

True intimacy, the exchange of affection between two people who are not lying, is transforming.

How disappointing would it be get to heaven and find out God created life to be enjoyed while all we did was worry?

When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are. And when you stop expecting material possessions to complete you, you'd be surprised at how much pleasure you get in material possessions. And when you stop expecting God to end all your troubles, you'd be surprised how much you like spending time with God.

You're always weighing whether you should be that accessible or not, but my personality is naturally just to throw it all out there, so I'm much more comfortable with doing thatmy personality is naturally just to throw it all out there, so I'm much more comfortable with doing that.

He said to me I was a tree in a story about a forest, and that it was arrogant of me to believe any differently. And he told me the story of the forest is better than the story of the tree.

The truth is there are a million steps, and we don't even know what the steps are, and worse, at any given moment we may not be willing or even able to take them; and still worse, they are different for you and they are always changing. I have come to believe the sooner we will fall in love with the God who keeps shaking things up, keeps changing the path, keeps rocking the boat to test our faith in Him, teaching us to not rely on easy answers, bullet points, magic mantras, or genies in lamps, but rather in His guidance, His existence, His mercy, and His love.

Sometimes when I watch my dog, I think about how good life can be, if we only lose ourselves in our stories. Lucy doesn't read self-help books about how to be a dog; she just IS a dog. All she wants to do is chase ducks and sticks and do other things that make both her and me happy. It makes me wonder if that was the intention for man, to chase sticks and ducks, to name animals, to create families, and to keep looking back at God to feed off his pleasure at our pleasure.

I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing.

the times we worked harder to make the day stand out. our story demanded that we change and so we did.

Fear isn’t only a guide to keep us safe; it’s also a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life … the great stories go to those who don’t give in to fear.

We don't think much about how our love stories will affect the world, but they do. Children learn what's worth living for and what's worth dying for by the stories they watch us live. I want to teach our children how to get scary close, and more, how to be brave. I want to teach them that love is worth what it costs.

There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. (They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.) And as I lay there, it occurred to me that God is up there somewhere.

I think that every living person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group thinking, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there, the problem is the needy beast of a thing living in my chest.

Even our beliefs have become trend statements.

It's something you can actually control. With writing, it feels like it's given to you, and when the good stuff hits, it feels like it's coming from some other planet.And you're just channeling it.

I know, from the three visits I made to him, the blended composite of love and fear that exists only in a boy's notion of his father.

There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing.

Some people skip through life. Others are dragged through it. I sometimes wonder if we are moving through time, or whether time is moving through us. Light, unlike anything else in the universe is not effected by time. Light exists outside of time.. It is still a mystery to physicists.

The trouble with deep belief is that it costs something. And there is something inside me, some selfish beast of a subtle thing that doesn't like the truth at all because it carries responsibility, and if I actually believe these things I have to do something about them. It is so, so cumbersome to believe anything. And it isn't cool.

If what you are doing is important, you will encounter resistance. If what you are doing isn't important it will be easy.

I took William Zinsser's advice that you write to yourself and you hope that there are people out there who are like you.

People want to join a great story. If you want to lead, tell one with your life.

I once listened to an Indian on television say that God was in the wind and the water, and I wondered at how beautiful that was because it meant you could swim in Him or have Him brush your face in a breeze.

As a human, I am flawed in that it is difficult for me to consider others before myself. It feels like I have to fight against this force, this current within me that, more often than not, wants to avoid serious issues and please myself, buy things for myself, feed myself, entertain myself, and all of that.

The human body essentially recreates itself every six months. Nearly every cell of hair and skin and bone dies and another is directed to its former place. You are not who you were last November.

I will love you like God, because of God, mighted by the power of God. I will stop expecting your love, demanding your love, trading for your love, gaming for your love. I will simply love. I am giving myself to you, and tomorrow I will do it again. I suppose the clock itself will wear thin its time before I am ended at this altar of dying and dying again. God risked Himself on me. I will risk myself on you. And together, we will learn to love, and perhaps then, and only then, understand this gravity that drew Him, unto us.

The inciting incident is how you get (characters) to do something. It's the doorway through which they can't return, you know. The story takes care of the rest.

The early bird catches the worm. But I have never been one for worms. I am not sure what the late bird catches, but I will feast with him today. Probably porridge.

By accepting God's love for us, we fall in love with Him, and only then do we have the fuel we need to obey.

Book of Ecclesiastes, God is saying... Write a good story, take somebody with you and let me help

Dying for something is easy because it is associated with glory. Living for something is the hard thing. Living for something extends beyond fashion, glory, or recognition. We live for what we believe.

If a piece of genius comes, it comes, and it if doesn't, it doesn't.

I don't find anyone more noble than Jesus.

I heard once that real love doesn't ask what is in it for me; it just gives unconditionally. It just tries to take the weight out of somebody else's pack, lessen his load, and if it gets reciprocated, that's great, but that isn't what you did it for.

Nobody will listen to you unless they sense that you like them.

I have sometimes wondered if the greatest desire of man is to be known and loved anyway.

I used to write when I was in the mood or felt inspired. Anymore, I write whether I feel inspired or not. It's a discipline. So that's definitely different. It's part of maturing as a person and as a professional.

...I want my spirituality to rid me of hate, not give me reason for it.

I loved the fact that it wasn't my responsibility to change somebody, that it was God's, that my part was just to communicate love and approval.

When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.