Donald Miller Quotes

I often learn more about myself from listening to the life story of a friend than I do reflecting on my own story. ~ Donald Miller

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

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. ~ Donald Miller

Later that year I happened to read a book by Dr. Neil Fiore that validated Bill's suspicion about being too careful. The book was called The Now Habit and was about overcoming procrastination. Dr. Fiore suggested that succeeding in a career is not unlike walking on a tightrope. The more success we achieve, the higher the rope. As we gain something, we have more to lose. Success causes a ravine beneath our careers that grows more deadly, creating a kind of fear of trying. He said the fear of letting people down is one of the primary reasons people procrastinate. ~ Donald Miller

I never thought to ascribe my mother's emotional and physical exhaustion to the lack of a husband and father; rather, I ascribed it to my existence. In other words, I grew up learning the exact opposite of what Eisenhower was taught. I learned that if I didn't exist, the family would be better off. I grew up believing that if I had never been born, things would be easier for the people I loved. (page 35) ~ Donald Miller

It confuses me that Christian living is not simpler. The gospel, the very good news, is simple. ~ Donald Miller

It's encouraging to watch what people will do to contribute to a love story. It's as though we universally recognize the union of souls is worth sacrificing for. ~ Donald Miller

Shame, he said, caused me to hide. "And that," he said, "is a problem. Because the more we hide, the harder it is to be known. And we have to be known to connect. ~ Donald Miller

I tend to connect most easily with two kinds of people, those who are creating something and those who are easily vulnerable. Both trees grow from the same root, I think, and that's the willingness to take risks. ~ Donald Miller

The whole experience makes me wonder if the time we spend trying to become somebody people will love isn't wasted because the most powerful, most attractive person we can be is who we already are, an ever-changing being that is becoming and will never arrive, but has opinions about what is seen along the journey. ~ Donald Miller

Although their access to scholarly tools was primitive compared to what is available in our day, their method of biblical interpretation was in some ways more sophisticated and certainly more psychologically astute, in that they were better able to fathom the complex, integrative, and transformative qualities of revelation. Their approach was far less narcissistic than our own tends to be, in that their goal when reading scripture was to see Christ in every verse, and not a mirror image of themselves. ~ Donald Miller

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. ~ Donald Miller

You can't tell a good story without conflict - the story can't be beautiful or meaningful. We're taught to run from conflict, and it's robbing us of some really good stories. ~ Donald Miller

The very scary thing about religion, to me, is that people actually believe God is who they think He is. ~ Donald Miller

I am a person of faith, so I come from a community that's involved in 360,000 churches across the country, that is an institution that could, in a relatively short period of time, provide hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of positive male role models. ~ Donald Miller

The ambitions we have will become the stories we live. ~ Donald Miller

It occurs to me it is not so much the aim of the devil to lure me with evil as it is to preoccupy me with the meaningless. ~ Donald Miller

What do markets do? They consolidate, they breakout, they extend, they overextend, they back and fill, they consolidate, and repeat the process. That's all you need to know about the markets. ~ Donald Miller

People who live great stories know failure isn't a judgment, it's an education. ~ Donald Miller

I no longer believe love works like a fairy tale but like farming. Most of it is just getting up early and tilling the soil and then praying for rain. But if we do the work, we just might wake up one day to find an endless field of crops rolling into the horizon. In my opinion, that's even better than a miracle. I'd rather earn the money than win the lottery because there's no joy in a reward unless it comes at the end of a story. ~ Donald Miller

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

And there is something profoundly humbling about knowing God. I'm not talking about the trinket God or the genie-in-a-lamp God. I mean the God who invented the tree in my front yard, the beauty of my sweetheart, the taste of a blueberry, the violence of a river at flood. There are a lot of religious trends that would have us controlling God, telling us that if we do this that and the other, God will jump through our hoops like a monkey. But this other God, this real God, is awesome and strong, all-encompassing and passionate, and for reasons I will never understand, he wants to father us. ~ Donald Miller

The more I try to impress people, the more I separate myself from them. Vulnerability attracts love. ~ Donald Miller

I have a pastor friend who says the root of sin is the desire for control. I think there's some truth to that. And I'd add the root of control is fear. ~ Donald Miller

I'm convinced every person has a longing that will never be fulfilled and it's our job to let it live and breathe and suffer within it as a way of developing our character. ~ Donald Miller

I am human because God made me. I experience suffering and temptation because mankind chose to follow Satan. God is reaching out to me to rescue me. I am learning to trust Him, learning to live by His precepts that I might be preserved. ~ Donald Miller

Tony the Beat Poet says the church is like a wounded animal these days. He says we used to have power and influence, but now we don't, and so many of our leaders are upset about this and acting like spoiled children, mad because they can't have their way. They disguise their actions to look as though they are standing on principle, but it isn't that, Tony says, it's bitterness. They want to take their ball and go home because they have to sit the bench. Tony and I agree that what God wants to do is sit the bench in humility and turn the other cheek like Gandhi, like Jesus. We decided that the correct place to share our faith was from a place of humility and love, not from a desire for power. ~ Donald Miller

I will give you this, my love, and I will not bargain or barter any longer. I will love you, as sure as He has loved me. I will discover what I can discover and though you remain a mystery, save God's own knowledge, what I disclose of you I will keep in the warmest chamber of my heart, the very chamber where God has stowed Himself in me. And I will do this to my death, and to death it may bring me.
I will love you like God, because of God, mighted by the power of God. I will stop expecting your love, demanding you 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. ~ Donald Miller

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. ~ Donald Miller

Considering what Adam went through to appreciate Eve to the utmost, I wondered how beautiful it is that you and I were created to need each other. The romantic need is just the beginning, because we need our families and we need our friends. In this way, we are made in God's image. Certainly God does not need people in the way you and I do, but He feels a joy at being loved, and He feels a joy at delivering love. It is a stinking thought to realize that, in paradise, a human is incomplete without a host of other people. We are relational indeed. And the Bible, with all its understanding of the relational needs of humans, was becoming more meaningful to me as I turned the pages. God made me, He knows me, He understands me, and He wants community. ~ Donald Miller

My uncle told a great story with his life, but I think there was such a sadness at his funeral because his story wasn't finished. If you aren't telling a good story, nobody thinks you died too soon; they just think you died. But my uncle died too soon. ~ Donald Miller

What good does it do to tell somebody to live morally so they can die 50 years later and apparently go to Hell? ~ Donald Miller

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. ~ Donald Miller

Grace only sticks to our imperfections. Those who can't accept their imperfections can't accept grace either. ~ Donald Miller

The economy is turning around, so that's going to help a little bit. ~ Donald Miller

The thing about new things is you feel new when you buy them, you feel as though you are somebody different because you own something different. We are our possessions, you know. There are people who get addicted to buying new stuff. Things. Piles and piles of things. But the new things become old things so quickly. We need new things to replace the old things. ~ Donald Miller

Meaning is something we experience more than we attain. It's like finding a nice, easy current in a river that carries you through life. ~ Donald Miller

Maybe the reason we like stories so much is because they deliver wish fulfillment. Maybe we sit in the dark and shovel sugar into our mouths because in so many stories everything is made right, and we secretly long for that ourselves. ~ Donald Miller

They never tell you when you get born a control freak it will cost you a healthy love life. But it's true. You can't control somebody and have intimacy with them at the same time. They may stay because they fear you, but true love casts out fear. ~ Donald Miller

I think that's why so many couples fight, because they want their partners to validate them and affirm them, and if they don't get that, they feel as though they're going to die. And so they lash out. But it's a terrible thing to wake up and realize the person you just finished crucifying wasn't Jesus. ~ Donald Miller

If honesty is the key to intimacy, it means we don't have to be perfect and, moreover, we don't have to pretend to be perfect. ~ Donald Miller

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. ~ Donald Miller

Frankl theorized a sense of meaning was existential, that it was something that passed through us not unlike the recognition of beauty or a feeling of gratitude. And he believed life could be structured in such a way people would experience meaning. His prescription to experience a deep sense of meaning, then, was remarkably pragmatic. He had three recommendations: 1. Have a project to work on, some reason to get out of bed in the morning and preferably something that serves other people. 2. Have a redemptive perspective on life's challenges. That is, when something difficult happens, recognize the ways that difficulty also serves you. 3. Share your life with a person or people who love you unconditionally. ~ Donald Miller

If you work hard, stay focused, and never give up, you will eventually get what you want in life. ~ Donald Miller

We don't think of our flaws as the glue that binds us to the people we love, but they are. Grace only sticks to your imperfections. ~ Donald Miller

Andrew would say that dying for something is easy because it is associated with glory. Living for something, Andrew would say, is the hard thing. ~ Donald Miller

I kept asking Him to say it again, but He wouldn't. I guess it's because I heard Him the first time, you know. ~ Donald Miller

God allows us to face the tension whether we like it or not. ~ Donald Miller

As silly as it sounds, I realized, late that night, that other people had feelings and fears and that my interactions with them actually meant something, that I could make them happy or sad in the way that I associated with them. Not only could I make them happy or sad, but I was responsible for the way I interacted with them. ~ Donald Miller

Most great art is created when the artist feels they are channeling something rather than trying to communicate something. ~ Donald Miller

The only appropriate war rhetoric is more rhetoric that calls our enemies spirits and people with flesh the victims of this war. Satan wants us to fight with one another, and I understand that some evil must be restrained, but our war, the war of the ones who believe in Jesus, is a war unseen. If we could muster a portion of the patriotism we feel toward our earthly nations into patriotism and bravery in concert with the kingdom of God, the enemy would take fewer casualties. ~ Donald Miller

I suppose building a healthy family is possible. Maybe what children really need is simple. Maybe they just need somebody to show them it's okay to be human. ~ Donald Miller

We learn because in doing so we experience something like the pleasure God felt in the act of creation. We discover his handiworks with him. ~ Donald Miller

Anarchy!" Tony confirmed in sort of a laugh.
"Sometimes I think, you know, if there were not cops, I would be fine, and I probably would. I was taught right from wrong when I was a kid. But the truth is, I drive completely different when there is a cop behind me than when there isn't."
And what Tony and I were talking about is true. It is hard for us to admit we have a sin nature because we live in a system of checks and balances. If we get caught, we will be punished. But that doesn't make us good people; it only makes us subdued. Just think about the Congress and Senate and even the president. The genius of the American system is not freedom; the genius of the American system is checks and balances. Nobody gets all the power. Everybody is watching everybody else. Is is as the founding fathers knew, intrinsically, that the soul of man, unwatched, is perverse. ~ Donald Miller

When I met couples whose marriages were thriving after thirty and forty years, none of them were riding an emotional roller coaster of passion and then resentment. Instead, they loved each other as an act of their conscious will. They were more in control of their love than their "love" was in control of them. ~ Donald Miller

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. ~ Donald Miller

What we really need is somebody who loves us so much we don't worry about death, or about [anything for that matter] ... We need this; we need this so we can love other people purely and not for selfish gain, we need this so we can see everybody as equals, we need this so our relationships can be sincere, we need this so we can stop kicking ourselves around, we need this so we can lose all self-awareness and find ourselves for the first time, not by realizing some dream, but by being told who we are by the only Being who has the authority to know, by that I mean the Creator. ~ Donald Miller

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

The people I used to be surrounded by are getting along without me. Somehow, that really bugs me. ~ Donald Miller

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. ~ Donald Miller

It's not what people do that scares me. It's what they hide. It's the secrets that keep us from bonding and create distrust. If we were more willing to accept each other's depravity we'd be more united, we'd be more honest. If you hide two things from me, I'll assume you're hiding a million. And I'll keep you at a distance. I'm not afraid of the evil in you. It's in me too. ~ Donald Miller

Sometimes the real bonding happens in conversations about nothing, Don," she said. "Sometimes being willing to talk about nothing shows how much we want to be with each other. And that's a powerful thing. ~ Donald Miller

Christian spirituality was not a children's story. It wasn't cute or neat. It was mystical and odd and clean, and it was reaching into dirty. There was wonder in it and enchantment. ~ Donald Miller

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

My friend looked at me confused. He laughed a little, then sighed, then teared up. "It's true you're bad at relationships," I said, "but it's also true you are good at them. They're both true, old friend." I reminded him of all the people who love him and all the people he's loved. I told him I thought it was unfair for a man to be judged by a moment, by a season. We are all more complicated than that. ~ Donald Miller

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

When you build a city near no mountains and no ocean, you get materialism and traditional religion. People have too much time and lack inspiration. ~ Donald Miller

Telling the truth is the slow, mundane, difficult route to a meaningful life. Anything else is cheating. ~ Donald Miller

...but the reality is people want to work for more than just money. They want to work to build and sustain a community they love. As we shared our personal dreams with each other, my work was no longer about me reaching my goals, it was about me contributing to a team in which we'd all tied our dreams together. ~ Donald Miller

We have to be taught to be good. It doesn't come natural. ~ Donald Miller

I knew he wouldn't die, because his life was like the roots of a tree that went miles into the soil and miles around its trunk and came up in my cousins, in their faces and their voices and their character. I didn't think you could kill a tree that big. Not even God could kill a tree that big. ~ Donald Miller

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

It's one thing to impress people, but it's another to love them. ~ Donald Miller

And through a dark night of the soul, I came to realize that salvation happens through a mysterious, indefinable, relational interaction with Jesus in which we become one with Him. I realized Christian conversion worked more like falling in love than understanding a series of concepts of ideas. This is not to say there are no true ideas, it is only to say there is something else, something beyond. ~ Donald Miller

I am quitting this thing, but not what you think. I am not going away. I will give you this, my love, and I will not bargain or barter any longer. I will love you, as sure as He has loved ~ Donald Miller

All relationships are teleological, are going somewhere. ~ Donald Miller

I wanted tolerance. I wanted everybody to leave everybody else alone, regardless of their religious beliefs, regardless of their political affiliation. I wanted people to like each other. Hatred seemed, to me, the product of ignorance. I was tired of biblical ethic being used as a tool with which to judge people rather than heal them. I was tired of Christian leaders using biblical principles to protect their power, to draw a line in the sand separating the good army from the bad one. The truth is I had met the enemy in the woods and discovered they were not the enemy. I wondered whether any human being could be an enemy of God. ~ Donald Miller

Imagine, a Being with a mind as great as God's, with feet like trees and a voice like rushing wind, telling you that you are His cherished creation. ~ Donald Miller

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

Love can't be earned, it can only be given. And it can only be exchanged by people who are completely true with each other. ~ Donald Miller

I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.
After that I liked jazz music.
Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.
I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened. ~ Donald Miller

What do you want your marriage to look like? he repeated. I'd never thought about it. I'd spent countless ~ Donald Miller

The reality is this, though: a healthy person coupled with an unhealthy person will still result in an unhealthy relationship. ~ Donald Miller

My broken identity turned me into a manipulator and my romantic life looked like one of those fishing shows on television, a game of catch and release in which I only held the girl long enough to snap a picture. ~ Donald Miller

Your problem is not that God is not fulfilling, your problem is that you are spoiled. ~ Donald Miller

I don't know why it is, exactly, but the people with the healthiest self-esteem, are also the greatest at intimacy. I'm not talking about arrogant people. I'm talking about people who know they are both good and bad yet believe at the deepest level they are really good for people. ~ Donald Miller

The problem with Christian culture is we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money. [ ... ] If something is doing something for us, offering us something, be it gifts, time, popularity, or what have you, we feel they have value, we feel they are worth something to us. I could see it so clearly, and I could see it in the pages of my life. This was the thing that had smelled so rotten all these years. I used love like money. The church used love like money. With love, we withheld affirmation from the people who did not agree with us, but we lavishly financed the ones who did. ~ Donald Miller

I learned that true love turns the other cheek, does not take a wrong into account, loves all people regardless of their indifference or hostility. ~ Donald Miller

The real issue in the Christian community was that it was conditional. You were loved, but if you had questions, questions about whether the Bible was true or whether America was a good country or whether last week's sermon was good, you were not so loved. You were loved in word, but there was, without question, a social commodity that was being withheld from you until you shaped up. By toeing the party line you earned social dollars; by being yourself you did not. If you wanted to be valued, you became a clone. These are broad generalizations, and they are unfair, but this is what I was thinking at the time. ~ Donald Miller

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. ~ Donald Miller

I didn't want to get well, because if I got well, nobody would come and save me anymore. And I didn't want to get well, because while I could not control my happiness, I could control my misery, and I would rather have had control than live in the tension of what if. A chance of hope is no pacifier against a sure tragedy. ~ Donald Miller

I am willing to sound dumb. I am willing to be wrong. I am willing to be passionate about something that isn't perceived as cool. I am willing to express a theory. I am willing to admit I'm afraid. I'm willing to contradict something I've said before. I'm willing to have a knee-jerk reaction, even a wrong one. I'm willing to apologize. I'm perfectly willing to be perfectly human. ~ Donald Miller

All this beauty exists so you and I can see His glory, His artwork. It's like an invitation to worship Him, to know Him. ~ Donald Miller

After the injury he began to dress more like an artist. He wore nice scarves and saved his money for a good hat, a full-round brim with a small feather under the band. He wore bright socks and loved long conversations over supper - rich, funny conversations that could easily replace dessert. If there was a lull in the dialogue, he'd point to you and say it was your turn to talk. Now you say something interesting. ~ Donald Miller

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. ~ Donald Miller

Loneliness is something that happens to us, but I think it is something we can move ourselves out of. I think a person who is lonely should dig into a community, give himself to a community, humble himself before his friends, initiate community, teach people to care for each other, love each other. Jesus does not want us floating through space or sitting in front of our televisions. Jesus wants us interacting, eating together, laughing together, praying together. Loneliness is something that came with the fall..If loving other people is a bit of heaven then certainly isolation is a bit of hell, and to that degree, here on earth, we decide in which state we like to live. ~ Donald Miller

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

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

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

Some people skip through life; some people are dragged through it. ~ Donald Miller