N D Wilson Quotes

A man's words reveal, first, the man. The words are not the man, and yet they reveal him faithfully and are to be identified with him. Out of the abundance of the heart, the man speaks. The foundational nature of all language is therefore metaphorical because every word a man speaks reveals himself - just as God reveals Himself through the Word. Every word spoken ultimately reveals the speaker. ~ N.D. Wilson

Cheese, Leon! Go get the cheese! ~ N.D. Wilson

We are characters - spoken and shaped down to the rhythms of the electrons in our toe fungus. But we are also active. We have been shaped in the Shaper's image. ~ N.D. Wilson

In this story, the sun moves. In this story, every night meets a dawn and burns away in the bright morning. In this story, Winter can never hold back the Spring ... He is the best of all possible audiences, the only Audience to see every scene, the Author who became a Character and heaped every shadow on Himself. The Greeks were right. Live in fear of a grinding end and a dank hereafter. Unless you know a bigger God, or better yet, are related to Him by blood. ~ N.D. Wilson

Henry successfully kept his mind on the game, which might seem strange for a boy who slept beside a wall of magic. But baseball was as magical to him as a green, mossy mountain covered in ancient trees. What's more, baseball was a magic he could run around in and laugh about. While the magic of the cupboards was not necessarily good, the smell of leather mixed with dusty sweat and spitting and running through sparse grass after a small ball couldn't be anything else. ~ N.D. Wilson

Do not slip into writing for the mind and the mind alone. In other words, do not play merely upon our ability to reason. And do not focus only on visuals. Write for the whole person. ~ N.D. Wilson

snow is overused. ~ N.D. Wilson

We grasp because God does. We create, and fall short, because God does. We continue creating because we fell short, and fall short again, because God does. Because one act of creation, one attempt at capture, is only one breath and we must breathe again. And again. And again. Here we stand (and sit and sleep), the many images of the Imager, and we can do no other. ~ N.D. Wilson

Slowly, Rupert Greeves raised his head. His eyelids fluttered and the corner of his mouth twitched up.
'What,' he asked the world, 'can you do to erase my laughter? ~ N.D. Wilson

I listened to you tell me, tell everyone, and all the world, "Praise the Lord." You were broken, but not by bullets and bombs. You were broken by grace. ~ N.D. Wilson

That wasn't me. I'm not a morning person. There's another person inside of me that does all the morning things. ~ N.D. Wilson

What is the world? What is it for?
It is an art. It is the best of all possible art, a finite picture of the infinite. Assess it like prose, like poetry, like architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, delta blues, opera, tragedy, comedy, romance, epic. Assess it like you would a Faberge egg, like a gunfight, like a musical, like a snowflake, like a death, a birth, a triumph, a love story, a tornado, a smile, a heartbreak, a sweater, a hunger pain, a desire, a fufillment, a desert, a waterfall, a song, a race, a frog, a play, a song, a marriage, a consummation, a thirst quenched.
Assess it like that. And when you're done, find an ant and have him assess the cathedrals of Europe. ~ N.D. Wilson

Nietzsche- a weak but strongly mustachioed, Lutheran Pastor's son. ~ N.D. Wilson

When you depart from standard usage, it should be deliberate and not an accidental lapse. Like a poet who breaks the rules of poetry for creative effect, this only works when you know and respect the rule you are breaking. If you have never heard of the rules you are breaking, you have no right to do so, and you are likely to come off like a buffoon or a barbarian. Breaking rules, using slang and archaic language can be effective, but it is just as likely to give you an audience busy with wincing. ~ N.D. Wilson

Going where no man has gone before is more difficult than it sounds. Our cousins and ancestors were no less curious than we are, and were perhaps bolder. This world is their tomb.
You should look under the bed. ~ N.D. Wilson

He exists on two planes. He sees the story as He tells it, while He weaves it, shapes it, and sings it. And He stepped inside it. The shadows exist in the painting, the dark corners of grief and trial and wickedness all exist so that He might step inside them, so we could see how low He can stoop. In this story, the Author became flesh and wandered the stage with Hamlet, offering His own life. In this story, the Author heaped all that He loathed, all that displeased Him, all the wrongness of the world, onto Himself. ~ N.D. Wilson

Lord, we flail. Forgive the lies we tell from purple thrones on TBN. Forgive the lies we tell in shrines. Forgive every attempt at self-redemption, the holy efforts we call our own, all the clawing we call resurrection. Bury us. Take us to helpless dust. Then roll away the stone and call us by our names. Make us all Lazarus. (125) ~ N.D. Wilson

He walked down the path of villains, but he became a hero in the end. He has the timepieces, and they have touched his soul forever. He must learn to walk in the darkness between times and wield power without rage. ~ N.D. Wilson

Every year, Kansas watches the world die. Civilizations of wheat grow tall and green; they grow old and golden, and then men shaped from the same earth as the crop cut those lives down. And when the grain is threshed, and the dances and festivals have come and gone, then the fields are given over to fire, and the wheat stubble ascends into the Kansas sky, and the moon swells to bursting above a blackened earth.

The fields around Henry, Kansas, had given up their gold and were charred. Some had already been tilled under, waiting for the promised life of new seed. Waiting for winter, and for spring, and another black death.

The harvest had been good. Men, women, boys and girls had found work, and Henry Days had been all hot dogs and laughter, even without Frank Willis's old brown truck in the parade.

The truck was over on the edge of town, by a lonely barn decorated with new No Trespassing signs and a hole in the ground where the Willis house had been in the spring and the early summer. Late summer had now faded into fall, and the pale blue farm house was gone. Kansas would never forget it. ~ N.D. Wilson

Do not resent your place in the story. Do not imagine yourself elsewhere. Do not close your eyes and picture a world without thorns, without shadows, without hawks. Change this world. Use your body like a tool meant to be used up, discarded, and replaced. Better every life you touch. We will reach the final chapter. When we have eyes that can stare into the sun, eyes that only squint for the Shenikah, then we will see laughing children pulling cobras by their tails, and hawks and rabbits playing tag. ~ N.D. Wilson

Hands. Do not resent your place in the story. Do not imagine yourself elsewhere. Do not close your eyes and picture a world without thorns, without shadows, without hawks. Change this world. Use your body like a tool meant to be used up, discarded, and replaced. Better every life you touch. We will reach the final chapter. ~ N.D. Wilson

Complain. Whine. Be a fusser. The story needs those as well, because every butt needs a joke, and the audience must laugh. Whether they (and God) laugh at or with us is up to you. ~ N.D. Wilson

Horace smiled. Always breakfast like a man condemned. One never knows that a day may bring. ~ N.D. Wilson

If your boy's alive, the last thing you should want to do is double his trouble. Don't try to run to him when he's in something thick unless you can bring him the answer ... If you raised your boy how you should've, then you know he's fighting with what he's got. If he dies, then you'll know he died trying, and that's as much as you can ask ... Ted's gone. But he left you a son made out of the same stuff he was, and don't you underestimate him. If you know Tom, then you'll have some faith in the boy. The odds might be long, but I'll bet on him. ~ N.D. Wilson

Her evil cannot reach us here. Let us burn the ancient tree-mace trees and close off the ancient ways. Tear down the tower, the crown of our barrow, and let us hide ourselves from evil. Let no one leave the mound, and if evil grows, we shall flee farther.
No! Let evil hear the pounding of our feet! Let evil hear our drumming and our chanting songs of war. Let evil fear us! Let evil flee! In any world, may dark things know our names and fear. May their vile skins creep and shiver at every mention of the faeren. Let the night flee before the dawn and darkness crowd into the shadows. We march to war!
- Nudd, the Chestnut King ~ N.D. Wilson

I knew I was different from the rest of you plebes. Look how silly and gothic you all look with your skinny, knobbed arms. I'm unique. Neoclassical. ~ N.D. Wilson

Nails are forged for pounding. Man is born to trouble. Man is born for trouble. Man is born to battle trouble. Man is born for the fight, to be forged and molded - under torch and hammer and chisel - into a sharper, finer, stronger image of God. ~ N.D. Wilson

To love is to be selfless. To be selfless is to be fearless. To be fearless is to strip enemies of their greatest weapon. Even if they break our bodies and drain our blood, we are unvanquished. Our goal was never to live; our goal is to love. It is the goal of all noble men and women. Give all that can be given. Give even your live itself. ~ N.D. Wilson

Tom shut his eyes again, because when his eyes were shut, he could tell himself that there was light. ~ N.D. Wilson

Christ to the thief: Come with me. We die together, a thief and the Maker of the world. Walk with the Infinite made flesh into the belly of the whale. Stand close while reality quakes. Watch while Death is taken by the throat. Today you will be with me in Paradise.
Stories don't end at death. ~ N.D. Wilson

You must wake because your name awaits, and your blood is called. ~ N.D. Wilson

We have been created as recipients. I look at the stars, at the grass, at my fat-faced children, at my fingernails, and I am oppressed by gratitude
I have been given a belly so that I might hunger. I have been given hunger so that I might be fed.
I look in the atheist's mirror. I look at his faith in the nonexistence of meaning. I look at his preaching and painting. I see nothing but a shit-storm.
Why would I walk through that door? Why would I live in your novel? ~ N.D. Wilson

When Job lifted his face to the Storm, when he asked and was answered, he learned that he was very small. He learned that his life was a story. He spoke with the Author, and learned that the genre had not been an accident. God tells stories that make Sunday school teachers sweat and mothers write their children permission slips excusing them from encountering reality. ~ N.D. Wilson

I am here to paint you a picture of the world I see ~ N.D. Wilson

Boys should sleep in during the summer. I don't know how else people expect them to grow. ~ N.D. Wilson

Cyrus walked straight to the tallest crack of light, a seam between two doors. They were locked, but they were also thin and old, and they bent a little with pressure from his shoulder.

He backed up.

"Try one of Skelton's keys," said Antigone. "Is there a keyhole?"

"Nope." Cyrus threw himself against the doors. Wood popped, but he bounced back. "I can break it."

"You mean a rib? Maybe your shoulder?" Antigone adjusted her grip, propping Horace in front of her.

"There's just one little bolt," said Cyrus. "And it's set in old wood." He paused. What was he hearing? Voices. Shouting. "You hear that?" he asked.

Antigone nodded. "They don't sound happy."

This time, Cyrus used his foot. The wood splintered, and the two doors wobbled open onto a world of emerald and sunlight. ~ N.D. Wilson

You fainted,' Tom said.
Reg coughed.
No, I didn't,' he said. 'Women faint. People afraid of needles faint. Men black out. ~ N.D. Wilson

Your father died for me, and dying with you would be an honor, though not as great as dying to save you. ~ N.D. Wilson

That much life is heavy for the strongest shoulders. ~ N.D. Wilson

As long as I'm dealing in honesty, I may as well admit that I have been more influenced (as a person) by my childhood readings of Tolkien and Lewis than I have been by any philosophers I read in college and grad school. The events and characters in Narnia and Middle Earth shaped my ideals, my dreams, my goals. Kant just annoyed me. ~ N.D. Wilson

Every four years, I'll watch figure skating, but I'm no closer to buying tights. ~ N.D. Wilson

The clear water rippled gently, licking the line of fresh blue tile around its rim like a liquid puppy waiting to be played with. ~ N.D. Wilson

Kansas is not easily impressed. It has seen houses fly and cattle soar. When funnel clouds walk through the wheat, big hail falls behind. As the biggest stones melt, turtles and mice and fish and even men can be seen frozen inside. And Kansas is not surprised.
Henry York had seen things in Kansas, things he didn't think belonged in this world. Things that didn't. Kansas hadn't flinched. ~ N.D. Wilson

I've watched goldfish make babies, and ants execute earwigs. I've seen a fly deliver live young while having its head eaten by a mantis. And I had a golden retriever behave like one. ~ N.D. Wilson

We haven't stopped running, but we are getting slower. We have little people running with us now. We have passed others. Our own people will pass us. They will grow and meet others who are young and strong and they will feel as if they are part of the very beginning of life. ~ N.D. Wilson

To exist in this poem [of creation] is a greater gift than any finite creature can imagine. To be so insignificant and yet still be given a speaking part, to be given scenes that are my own, and my own only, scenes where the audience is limited to the Author Himself (scenes that I often flub), to have been here with my frozen nose, to have been crafted with at least as much care as a snowflake (though I'm harder to melt), and to hear and feel and see and taste and smell the heavy poetry of God, that is enough. ~ N.D. Wilson

But God never seems capable of moderation ~ N.D. Wilson

If someone else was delivering your lines, would you like them? If someone else was wearing your attitude, would you be impressed? ~ N.D. Wilson

After three years down here, I've not learned too much. But one thing I do know is that our bellies aren't big enough for revenge. It turns sour and eats you up. We'll get out, but we'll get out for the sun, the moon, and mothers, not for small-souled enemies, though we'll deal with them when we get there. ~ N.D. Wilson

Affectation is really a question of heart motive. Growing into a persona is an essential part of maturing. Anything you might choose to do is going to contribute to one persona or another. People will only call attention to it if it is markedly different from the course you were apparently on before. ~ N.D. Wilson

May my living be grace to those behind me. ~ N.D. Wilson

In Bright Shadow: C.S. Lewis on the Imagination for Theology and Discipleship ~ N.D. Wilson

My wife and I tend to overgift to our kids at Christmas. We laugh and feel foolish when a kid is so distracted with one toy that we must force them into opening the next, or when something grand goes completely unnoticed in a corner. How consumerist, right? How crassly American. How like God. We are all that overwhelmed kid, not even noticing our heartbeats, not even noticing our breathing, not even noticing that our fingertips can feel and pick things up, that pie smells like pie and that our hangnails heal and that honey-crisp apples are real and that dogs wag their tails and that awe perpetually awaits us in the sky. The real yearning, the solomonic state of mind, is caused by too much gift, by too many things to love in too short a time. Because the more we are given, the more we feel the loss as we are all made poor and sent back to our dust. ~ N.D. Wilson

The world is R-rated, and no one's checking IDs ~ N.D. Wilson

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (that fabulously large Catholic writer) overheard someone making fun of Milton (it didn't matter that the insults were all true). ~ N.D. Wilson

Evolution has produced us more recently, and that makes us the smartest ever. After all, we invented the parking lot. ~ N.D. Wilson

Columbus was the first to come to the east. Vikings don't count, and neither do all the people who were standing on the beaches and waving when he got here. ~ N.D. Wilson

Life is a story. Why do we die? Because we live. Why do we live? Because our Maker opened His mouth and began to tell a story. ~ N.D. Wilson

Hold your tongue if you'd like to keep it. - Jaques ~ N.D. Wilson

This is poetry, but it is not delicate and fragile, a placid ocean beneath a Bible vese on an inspirational poster. This poetry had testicles. It's rougher than a rodeo. Which is why the cliffs are crowded with spectators ~ N.D. Wilson

Henry flopped onto his bed, and his steam leaked slowly out. He began telling himself a story in his head. It was about how just and kind and understanding he was. It was about right he had been, how necessary his tone and word choice. It was about a girl who just didn't understand, who was completely ignorant. Then, for some reason, the narrator of the story included an incident in which Henry ha pushed an envelope into a strange place just to see what would happen. It hadn't even been an accident. The incident did not fit with the rest of the story, so Henry tried to ignored it. He couldn't ignore it, so he tried to explain it. Completely different things. The post office was obviously not dangerous. It was yellow. I just wanted to see what the mailman would do. The flashlight was stupid. I didn't shine a flashlight into the post office. She didn't even act sorry. I would have acted sorry. I always act sorry when people get upset. She didn't even care that I probably saved her life. She didn't know. She was unconscious. Oh, shut up. ~ N.D. Wilson

Summer has come with the loveliness of a mother Heat, not warmth, now pours onto my face, aging me, taking me closer to death.
Let it. I am here to live my story, to love my story. I will not fail to savor any gift out of a desire for self-preservation. Self-preservation is not a great virtue in this story. ~ N.D. Wilson

It's the dull knife that cuts you. ~ N.D. Wilson

In the Darwinian world, self-preservation is the ultimate shiny good. ~ N.D. Wilson

Butter laughed beneath sea salt, and gravy anointed them both. ~ N.D. Wilson

Is the journey the destination? Please, no. Let me out of your Volkswagen bus at the next corner. ~ N.D. Wilson

What is this world? What is it for? It is art. It is the best of all possible art, a finite picture of the Infinite. ~ N.D. Wilson

Here Spring just grows and greens and warms, spreading life, wrapping us in her arms, until suddenly we realize that she's not a girl anymore. She's a woman. A woman named Summer. ~ N.D. Wilson

Your life will contribute to a grand and wonderful story no matter what you do. You have been spoken. You are here, existing, choosing, living, shaping the future and carving the past. Your physical matter and your soul exist, not out of necessity, not voluntarily, and not under their own strength. There is absolutely nothing that you or I can do to guarantee that we will continue to exist. You aren't doing anything that makes you be. We aren't the Author. You and I are spoken. We have been called into this art as characters, born into this thread of occurrence tumbling downstream in the long Niagara of loss set in motion by the trouble that faced our first father and first mother. We will contribute to this narrative. But how? ~ N.D. Wilson

Mistakes don't just hang on the wall like ugly pictures. Mistakes are seeds." He thumbed his chest. "In here. They grow. They take over. You make a mistake, you gotta make it right. Dig that seed out. Old Wiz used to say, 'Fruit rots, wood rots, but lazy-ass boys rot the fastest. ~ N.D. Wilson

No place is ever the same tomorrow. ~ N.D. Wilson

Solomon smiles with us ~ N.D. Wilson

We are nothing more than molded clay given breath, but we are nothing less than divine self-portraits, ~ N.D. Wilson

Shakespeare, adrenal glands, professional bowling, and the bizarre reproductive patterns of wasps (along with teams of BBC cameraman to document them( ~ N.D. Wilson

Caves and darkness can't hold you when you die, they can only hold your bones. ~ N.D. Wilson

Tom had traveled around the sun eleven times when the delivery truck brought his mother's newest fridge, but a number doesn't really describe his age. ~ N.D. Wilson

Self-loathing and self-worship can easily be the same thing. You hate the small sack of fluids and resentments that you are, and you would go to any length, and betray anything and anyone, to preserve it. ~ N.D. Wilson

The truth is that a life well lived is always lived on a rising scale of difficulty. ~ N.D. Wilson

Rule 1 for Mortals: Love the Lord your God (with every bit of you).
Rule 2 for Mortals: Love your neighbor as yourself.
Tip 1 for Mortals: Ask God to call your bluffs. ~ N.D. Wilson

Understand this: we are both tiny and massive. We are nothing more than molded clay given breath, but we are nothing less than divine self-portraits, huffing and puffing along the mountain ranges of epic narrative arcs prepared for us by the Infinite Word Himself. ~ N.D. Wilson

And I don't have to hold on with anything more than my toes ~ N.D. Wilson

Stories are like catechisms, but they're catechisms for your impulses, they're catechisms with flesh on. ~ N.D. Wilson

I love the world as it is, because I love what it will be. ~ N.D. Wilson

He made slighting remarks about the committee's enforcement, and, well, rules is rules as the rules say someplace, or at least as all the oldies say they say. ~ N.D. Wilson

There is a bus station in Henry, but it isn't on Main Street. It's one block north - the town fathers hadn't wanted all the additional traffic. The station lost one-third of its roof to a tornado fifteen years ago. In the same summer, a bottle rocket brought the gift of fire to its restrooms. The damage has never been repaired, but the town council makes sure that the building is painted fresh every other year, and always the color of a swimming pool. There is never graffiti. Vandals would have to drive more than twenty miles to buy the spray paint.

Every once in a long while, a bus creeps into town and eases to a stop beside the mostly roofed, bright aqua station with the charred bathrooms. Henry is always glad to see a bus. Such treats are rare. ~ N.D. Wilson

I have ridden with death, and walked beside it. Some say I have sought it. The search would not have been difficult, but I look for the death of my enemies first. That is much harder to find. ~ N.D. Wilson

It has thick skin, and all the most important thinkers have become part of it. ~ N.D. Wilson

The fall of man did not introduce evil; it placed us on the wrong side of it, under its rule, needing rescue. ~ N.D. Wilson

It is hard to stay focused with so much swirling around me. God is distracting. He never stops talking, and I can never stop listening. There is a reason we sleep. ~ N.D. Wilson

Do your best. Live. Create. Fail. ~ N.D. Wilson

You know,' Reg said, 'we're going to get out. We really are. Even if we have to let fire to the ceiling.' He glopped jam onto a white crawdad tail with a grit covered finger. 'But we have to eat enough of this so that we get sick and die a couple days after. ~ N.D. Wilson

Son," his father said. "Run faithfully to the end, and like all good men, you will die of having lived. ~ N.D. Wilson

Tragedy isn't an easy thing to kill. It takes more than a turtle. Tragedy must be destroyed by someone willing to be swallowed by it, willing to be broken, torn out of the flesh, but able to return to it. Someone must be able to shatter the tragic from within and exit into comedy, able to rip a hole so wide that a train of souls, a parade, could follow after, banging drums and throwing candy as they strolled into the sun. ~ N.D. Wilson

Cowards live for the sake of living, but for heroes, life is a weapon, a thing to be spent, a gift to be given to the weak and the lost and the weary, even to the foolish and the cowardly. ~ N.D. Wilson

The world never slows down so that we can better grasp the story, so that we can form study groups and drill each other on the recent past until we have total retention. We have exactly one second to carve a memory of that second, to sort and file and prioritize in some attempt at preservation. But then the next second has arrived, the next breeze to distract us, the next plane slicing through the sky, the next funny skip from the next funny toddler, the next squirrel fracas, and the next falling leaf. Our imaginations are busy enough capturing now that it is easy to lose just then. ~ N.D. Wilson

The world is rated R, and no one is checking IDs. Do not try to make it G by imagining the shadows away. Do not try to hide your children from the world forever, but do not try to pretend there is no danger. Train them. Give them sharp eyes and bellies full of laughter. Make them dangerous. Make them yeast, and when they've grown, they will pollute the shadows. ~ N.D. Wilson

But the storm-whipsers sound more pleased to me. Excited eve
~ N.D. Wilson

I've seen a baby born. And, ahem, I know what made it. But I'm not telling, you'd never believe me. ~ N.D. Wilson

Anastasia reached the attic stairs, slowed down, and listened. She knew that the first step to asking about secrets is seeing how much you can find out by sneaking. ~ N.D. Wilson

A neutral observer would not find this world to be believable. Ergo, the cause of said unbelievable world must place similar stretch marks on the imagination. Step ~ N.D. Wilson