Donald Miller famous quotes

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

#Men #Desire #Sometimes

And so I have come to understand that strength, inner strength, comes from receiving love as much as it comes from giving it.
-- Donald Miller

#Giving #Inner Strength #Receiving

What I believe is not what I say I believe; what I believe is what I do.
-- Donald Miller

#Believe #Action #I Believe

I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me
-- Donald Miller

#Breakfast #Pancakes #Made

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

#Love #Life #Relationship

We don't need as much as we have. Hardly any of us need as much money as we have. It's true what they say about the best things in life being free.
-- Donald Miller

#Being Free #Needs #Best Things In Life

Believing in God is as much like falling in love as it is making a decision. Love is both something that happens to you and something you decide upon.
-- Donald Miller

#Falling In Love #Believe #Love Is

...to be in a relationship with God is to be loved purely and furiously. And a person who thinks himself unlovable cannot be in a relationship with God because he can't accept who God is; a Being that is love. We learn that we are lovable or unlovable from other people...That is why God tells us so many times to love each other.
-- Donald Miller

#Thinking #People #Who God Is

...sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself...
-- Donald Miller

#Watches #Sometimes

Every creative person, and I think probably every other person, faces resistance when they are trying to create something good...The harder the resistance, the more important the task must be.
-- Donald Miller

#Thinking #Creative #Trying

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

#Book #Writing #Quitting

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.
-- Donald Miller

#Hair #Cells #Skins

Self-discipline will never make us feel righteous or clean; accepting God's love will.
-- Donald Miller

#Self #Discipline #Accepting

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

#Long #God Love

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

#Believe #Thinking #People

I think this is when most people give up on their stories. They come out of college wanting to change the world, wanting to get married, wanting to have kids and change the way people buy office supplies. But they get into the middle and discover it was harder than they thought. They can't see the distant shore anymore, and they wonder if their paddling is moving them forward. None of the trees behind them are getting smaller and none of the trees ahead are getting bigger. They take it out on their spouses, and they go looking for an easier story.
-- Donald Miller

#Giving Up #Moving #Kids

Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.
-- Donald Miller

#Travel #Home #Reason

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

#Worry #Heaven #Disappointing

I think the best thing a person can do is to read through the Gospels in the Bible and really look at Jesus, because if a person does this, they will realize that the Jesus they learned about in Sunday school or the Jesus they hear jokes about or the skinny, Gandhi Jesus that exists in their imaginations isn't anything like the real Jesus at all.
-- Donald Miller

#Jesus #Real #School

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

#Self Esteem #Believe #Talking

Fear is a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life.
-- Donald Miller

#Fear #Fresh Start #Emotion

If we are not willing to wake up in the morning and die to ourselves, perhaps we should ask ourselves whether or not we are really following Jesus.
-- Donald Miller

#Jesus #Morning #Wake Up

I'm the kind of person who wants to present my most honest, authentic self to the world, so I hide backstage and rehearse honest and authentic lines until the curtain opens.
-- Donald Miller

#Self #World #Lines

All relationships are living and alive and moving and becoming something.
-- Donald Miller

#Moving #Alive #Becoming

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.
-- Donald Miller

#Giving #Safe #Stories

It is no coincidence that Jesus talks endlessly about love. Free love. Unconditional love.
-- Donald Miller

#Jesus #Unconditional Love #Coincidence

When something happens to you, you have two choices in how to deal with it. You can either get bitter, or get better.
-- Donald Miller

#Two #Choices #Get Better

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

#Hate #Giving #Want

A story is based on what people think is important, so when we live a story, we are telling people around us what we think is important.
-- Donald Miller

#Thinking #People #Important

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.
-- Donald Miller

#Grateful #Moving #Responsibility

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.
-- Donald Miller

#Responsibility #Facts #Approval

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

#Temptation #Suffering #Might

Meaningful stories have lots and lots of conflict. If we avoid conflict, our stories won't be meaningful.
-- Donald Miller

#Meaningful #Stories #Conflict

Let's show up to life. Let's prove how beautiful it can really be. Let's face the conflict, redeem it, conquer it, and allow it to mold our character. Let's participate in what God is doing in the world.
-- Donald Miller

#Beautiful #Character #Mold

I am early in my story, but I believe I will stretch out into eternity, and in heaven I will reflect upon these early days, these days when it seemed God was down a dirt road, walking toward me. Years ago He was a swinging speck in the distance; now He is close enough I can hear His singing. Soon I will see the lines on His face.
-- Donald Miller

#Distance #Believe #Years

Be encouraged. Your heart is writing a poem on the world and it's being turned into a thousand songs.
-- Donald Miller

#Song #Writing #Heart

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.
-- Donald Miller

#Twenties #Needs #Use

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

#Meaningful #Cheating #Telling The Truth

The most important thing that happens within Christian spirituality is when a person falls in love with Jesus.
-- Donald Miller

#Christian #Falling In Love #Jesus

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

#Listening #Stories #Life Story

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.
-- Donald Miller

#Nature #Eye #Men

The mountains themselves call us into greater stories.
-- Donald Miller

#Mountain #Stories

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

#Art #Trying #Communicate

I want to start replacing my “fix” response with an “enjoy” response and just let people be themselves.
-- Donald Miller

#People #Want #Enjoy

You never question the truth of something until you have to explain it to a skeptic.
-- Donald Miller

#Skeptic

I fell in love with books. Some people find beauty in music, some in painting, some in landscape, but I find it in words. By beauty, I mean the feeling you have suddenly glimpsed another world, or looked into a portal that reveals a kind of magic or romance out of which the world has been constructed, a feeling there is something more than the mundane, and a reason for our plodding.
-- Donald Miller

#Book #Mean #People

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

#Wind #Voice #Rushing

Relationships unlock certain parts of who we are supposed to be.
-- Donald Miller

#Who We Are #Certain

My most recent faith struggle is not one of intellect. I don’t really do that anymore. Sooner or later you just figure out there are some guys who don’t believe in God and they can prove He doesn't exist, and there are some other guys who do believe in God and they can prove He does exist, and the argument stopped being about God a long time ago and now it’s about who is smarter, and honestly I don’t care.
-- Donald Miller

#Believe #Struggle #Long

I think Jesus is saying, Look, you guys are running around like monkeys trying to get people to clap, but people are fallen, they are separated from God, so they have no idea what is good or bad, worthy to be judged or set free, beautiful or ugly to begin with. Why not get your glory from God? Why not accept your feelings of redemption because of His pleasure in you, not the fickle and empty favor of man? And only then will you know who you are, and only then will you have true, uninhibited relationships with others.
-- Donald Miller

#Beautiful #Running #Jesus

Sometimes I wish I could go back in time, sit down with myself and explain that things were going to be okay, that everybody loses ground sometimes and it doesn’t mean anything. It’s the way life works. This is hard to understand in the moment. You get to thinking about the girl who rejected you, the job you got fired from, the test you failed, and you lose sight of the big picture — the fact that life has a beautiful way of remaking itself every few weeks.
-- Donald Miller

#Beautiful #Girl #Jobs

It wasn't necessary to win for the story to be great, it was only necessary to sacrifice everything.
-- Donald Miller

#Sacrifice #Winning #Stories

...I should have people around bugging me and getting under my skin because without people I could not grow - I could not grow in God, and I could not grow as a human.
-- Donald Miller

#People #Skins #Should

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.
-- Donald Miller

#Believe #Tree #Stories

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

#Mean #Tree #Stories

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

#Worship #Glory #Artwork

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.
-- Donald Miller

#Fashion #Believe #Dying

Job found contentment and even joy, outside the context of comfort, health or stability. He understood the story was not about him, and he cared more about the story then he did about himself.
-- Donald Miller

#Jobs #Joy #Contentment

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

#Cute #Christian #Children

I think each of us can, through our writing, discover our super power
-- Donald Miller

#Writing #Thinking #Super Power

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

#Letting Go #Given

Our lives have a countdown clock that we can't see. Mine reminds me to only do work that matters.
-- Donald Miller

#Matter #Clock #Countdown

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.”
-- Donald Miller

#Sunset #Mean #Dark

There's a genius part of you that wants to create. That part of you wants to talk to God. Get out of the way.
-- Donald Miller

#Genius #Want #Way

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

#People #World #Collapse

Here's the truth about telling stories with your life. It's going to sound like a great idea, and you're going to get excited about it, and then when it comes time to do the work, you're not going to want to do it. It's like that with writing books, and it's like that with life. People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen. But joy costs pain.
-- Donald Miller

#Pain #Book #Writing

If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn’t cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers.  You wouldn’t tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on to think about the story you’d seen.  The truth is, you wouldn’t remember that movie a week later, except you’d feel robbed and want your money back.  Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo.
-- Donald Miller

#Beautiful #Home #Thinking

I think, in the grand epic, Jesus is the hero of our stories. And our stories, as they were, are subplots in a grand epic and our job is not to be the hero of any story. Our job is to be a saint in a story that he is telling.
-- Donald Miller

#Jesus #Jobs #Hero

And once you live a good story, you get a taste for a kind of meaning in life, and you can't go back to being normal; you can't go back to meaningless scenes stitched together by the forgettable thread of wasted time.
-- Donald Miller

#Together #Stories #Taste

The most difficult lie I have ever contended with is this: life is a story about me.
-- Donald Miller

#Lying #Stories #Life Is

I don't wonder anymore what I'll tell God when I go to heaven when we sit in the chairs under the tree, outside the city........I'll tell these things to God, and he'll laugh, I think and he'll remind me of the parts I forgot, the parts that were his favorite. We'll sit and remember my story together, and then he'll stand and put his arms around me and say, "well done," and that he liked my story. And my soul won't be thirsty anymore. Finally he'll turn and we'll walk toward the city, a city he will have spoken into existence a city built in a place where once there'd been nothing.
-- Donald Miller

#Thinking #Cities #Laughing

I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made fo figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.
-- Donald Miller

#Walking Away #Mind #Want

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.
-- Donald Miller

#Beautiful #Wind #Water

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

#Eye #Night #Men

No, life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath... We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?" -Donald Miller,Through Painted Deserts
-- Donald Miller

#Falling In Love #Bridges #Rivers

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

#Evil #Devil #Aim

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

#Chocolate #Salad

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.
-- Donald Miller

#Meaningful #Meaning Of Life #Stories

If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation.
-- Donald Miller

#Character #Stories #Transformation

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.
-- Donald Miller

#Eye #Night #Men

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.
-- Donald Miller

#Running #Simple #Growth

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

#Tree #Losing #Worried

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

#Beautiful #Stars #Billions

When you fly across the country in an airplane the country seems vast; but it isn't vast. It's all connected by roads one can ride a bike down. If you watch the news and there's a tragedy at a house in Kansas, that guy's driveway connects with yours, and you'd be surprised by how few roads it takes to get there.
-- Donald Miller

#Country #Airplane #Kansas

Lets choose to do something really difficult, something that saves lives, and let's do that thing with people we love.
-- Donald Miller

#People #Save A Life #Difficult