Donald Miller Quotes

You cannot be a Christian without being a mystic

Good writers show rather than tell. Stories are told in action. Life stories are no different.

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.

And when you find love, or when you are mature enough to understand it, the feeling you get is gratitude.

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.

Today I wonder why it is God refers to Himself as 'Father' at all. This, to me, in light of the earthly representation of the role, seems a marketing mistake.

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.

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 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.

We don't know how much we are capable of loving until the people we love are being taken away, until a beautiful story is ending.

The downside of being a writer is you get plenty of time to overthink your life.

When one of my friends becomes a Christian, which happens about every 10 years because I am a sheep about sharing my faith, the experience is euphoric. I see in their eyes the trueness of the story.

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

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

I think life is staggering and we're just too used to it.

Grace only sticks to our imperfections. Those who can’t accept their imperfections can’t accept grace either.

Moral #1: "If you work hard, stay focused, and never give up, you will eventually get what you want in life." Moral #2: Sometimes the things we want most in life are the things that will kill us.

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

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

I think understanding your life as a story is a really terrific way of kind of knowing where you are and knowing who you are.

To change the world you'll need a pen.

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.

The most attractive characteristic in a person is the story they are telling the world. We stop and stare at stories.

If I use the Bible to prove I am right, I have yet to be humbled by the beautiful truths of the Bible.

Passion about nothing is like pouring gasoline in a car without wheels. It isn't going to lead anybody anywhere.

I stay away from churches in which I feel like I have to pretend I'm a better person than I am. That sort of thing moves my faith backwards.

God doesn't give us crying, pooping children because he wants to advance our careers.

We don't naturally want to take responsibility for our lives. We want to give the responsibility to someone else. We blame them when our lives aren't good.

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

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.

I love to give to charity, but I don't want to be charity. This is why I have so much trouble with grace.

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

There's no authoritarian structure at Reed College, but the education is conservative. So what you have is a lot of students who are very authentically looking for truth.

I don't find anyone more noble than Jesus.

Good stories must travel through conflict. And in epic stories, the conflict must become unbearable.

Without the Christian explanation of original sin, the seemingly silly story of Adam and Eve and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there was no explanation of conflict. At all.

When we think too much about the opinions of others, we are letting them edit a book God has written.

Every human being is searching for a deep sense of meaning, and yet we're all chasing success. We've confused one for the other.

How many people have damaged their own lives by mistaking enablement for grace?

When a relationship is right, it is no more possible to wake up and want out of the marriage than it is to wake up and stop believing in God. What is, is what is.

We live on top of the created world, I think to myself, not in it.

...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.

Even our beliefs have become trend statements. We don’t even believe things because we believe them anymore. We only believe things because they are cool things to believe.

Other people keep our souls alive, just like food and water does with our body.

I need for there to be something bigger than me. I need someone to put awe inside me; I need to come second to someone who has everything figured out.

Nothing is going to change in congo until you and i figure out what is wrong with the person inside the mirror

Most great art is freedom within form. Without form, we are amateurs, without freedom, we are robots.

Even our beliefs have become trend statements.

The heart responds to the conflict within a story.

I think the things we want most in life, the things we think will set us free, are not the thing we need.