Jan Karon famous quotes

One of the things that makes a dead leaf fall to the ground is the bud of the new leaf that pushes it off the limb.
-- Jan Karon

#Fall #Bud #Limbs

Cynthia came in quietly and set a cup of tea before him. He kissed her hand, inexpressibly grateful, and she went back into the kitchen. When we view the little things with thanksgiving, even they become big things.
-- Jan Karon

#Grateful #Views #Hands

Easter is never deserved.
-- Jan Karon

#Easter #Happy Easter

There may be circumstances in this life that God uses to keep bringing us back to Him, looking for His grace.
-- Jan Karon

#Grace #Use #May

In Ireland there’s no such thing as bad weather ~~~ only the wrong clothes. (In the Company of Others)
-- Jan Karon

#Weather #Clothes #Company

I've got a lot to download on your mercy and grace. I've always rushed up to You and dumped whatever it was and hurried away, fascinated by my own busyness. I want to turn all this over to You slowly, carefully, examining every fragment as I pass it off, so there'll never be any question about it again. Every time I've dumped and run, I've nearly always run back and snatched it out of Your hands. Help me in this.......Right now, I'm certain of only one thing - that You love us, and that's where we all have to begin.
-- Jan Karon

#Running #Hands #Grace

Lord, make me a blessing to someone today
-- Jan Karon

#Prayer #Blessing #Today

Give me faith, Lord, to know Your Presence as surely as I know the beating of my own heart. I've felt so far from You....
-- Jan Karon

#Heart #Giving #Lord

When the trees and the power lines crashed around you, when the very roof gave way above you, when the light turned to darkness and water turned to dust, did you call on Him? When you called on Him, was He somewhere up there, or was He as near as your very breath?
-- Jan Karon

#Light #Dust #Water

When we turn from our sin, and have the blessed forgiveness of the Almighty, then we can ask Him to run things, and let Him be in charge.
-- Jan Karon

#Running #Blessed #Sin

I believe that's when God first started speaking to my heart--the very day I started speaking to His!
-- Jan Karon

#Believe #Heart #Firsts

Publishing is, by its nature, about deadlines, and deadlines are toxic.
-- Jan Karon

#Toxic #Deadline #Publishing

My first novel is loaded with food references largely because my cupboards were bare, and I was writing hungry.
-- Jan Karon

#Writing #Firsts #Hungry

Let me say that I absolutely loved writing 'A Common Life,' because it was a book about love.
-- Jan Karon

#Book #Writing #Common

I've put everything I had and I've given my readers 120 percent, and that's the truth.
-- Jan Karon

#Given #Reader

I try to put my heart out there to everybody. They don't have to be Christian. For example, I have lots of Jewish readers. I love my Jewish readers.
-- Jan Karon

#Christian #Heart #Trying

I remember the first time I held my book, my first book in my hands. I cannot tell you how it moved me.
-- Jan Karon

#Book #Hands #Firsts

I really care about my readers. I care about anyone who reads my books.
-- Jan Karon

#Book #Care #I Care

I live in a village where people still care about each other, largely.
-- Jan Karon

#People #Village #Care

I have raced against the clock since I went into advertising at the age of eighteen.
-- Jan Karon

#Age #Advertising #Clock

So many people don't know that God loves them. They feel, 'Why would God love me? Why would He be interested in me?
-- Jan Karon

#People #God Love #God Loves Me

The dark book has been terribly popular. Dark characters, dysfunction, and all sorts of things from reality that are true in our world.
-- Jan Karon

#Book #Character #Dark

There's nothing trite about being consoled in a world that does everything in its power to deliver sorrow.
-- Jan Karon

#Sorrow #Doe #World

So here is what my advice would be: If God has given you a dream, you'd better get cracking because He wants you to use it. That's why He gives them to us in the first place.
-- Jan Karon

#Dream #Giving #Advice

My life is extremely full and wretchedly busy, and I feel that while my life drains energy from my work, my work in turn drains energy from my life. The result is, I am always playing catch-up spiritually. That is my thorn.
-- Jan Karon

#Energy #Life Is #Busy

There are so many people who don't know small towns exist. When I write, I want to give my readers two things: one is a sense of consolation, and two, I want to make them laugh.
-- Jan Karon

#Writing #Two #People

Love is an endless act of forgiveness.
-- Jan Karon

#Forgiveness #Love Is #Endless

I learned not to be so bitterly defeated when my fiction took a beating from editors. I learned in advertising to color in the lines and have my work done on time and to make it the very best it could be.
-- Jan Karon

#Color #Editors #Fiction

I have confidence that God is with us in all things, both tender and tough
-- Jan Karon

#Tough #Have Confidence

For a very long time, I wrote a book a year, and was eager and willing to do it, to put bread on the table, to have my work out there. Now I must write a book every two years, and that's never enough time, either.
-- Jan Karon

#Book #Writing #Years

Don't fear whatever God lays before you today.
-- Jan Karon

#Today

Cynics will say there are no good people out there. And if you read the papers and watch TV news you could be convinced of that. But there are good people.
-- Jan Karon

#Tv News #People #Watches

I grew up hearing words like snakeroot, sassafras, mullein - things that had wondrous, mysterious sounds in their names.
-- Jan Karon

#Names #Sound #Hearing

Even the roughest character, underneath all that hurt, is someone who wants to love and be loved.
-- Jan Karon

#Hurt #Character #Want

The standing fields [ready to harvest]were the legions who hadn't filled their God-vacuum with the One who was born to fill it; the standing fields were those who waited for someone to reach out and speak the truth, and tell them how they might be saved.
-- Jan Karon

#Vacuums #Might #Fields

Loving can be hard. Sometimes we don't feel loving, but it isn't all about feeling. Very often it is about will. Practice that if you can.
-- Jan Karon

#Practice #Feelings #Sometimes

Well, I think some people are very happy in retirement. And in a year and a half I'm going to see how happy I feel in retirement. I'm just going to not work quite so hard, but I'll continue to write as long as God gives me breath.
-- Jan Karon

#Retirement #Writing #Thinking

...weary of k knowing too much and understanding too little.
-- Jan Karon

#Knowing #Understanding #Littles

I'd like you to know that I have forgiven him. Again and again. Once done, course, back comes the Enemy to persecute and persecute, and I must ante up to God and forgive yet again.
-- Jan Karon

#Forgiving #Enemy #Done

Are you reading your Bible?" Ah, well...I was." And then you quit." You got it." Then, you can expect to be weak on one of your flanks, and that's precisely where the Enemy will come after you with a vengeance.
-- Jan Karon

#Reading #Enemy #Quitting

The firefly only shines when on the wing, So it is with us--when we stop, we darken.
-- Jan Karon

#Firefly #Wings #Shining

Sometimes you have to gag on fancy before you can appreciate plain, th' way I see it. For too many years, I ate fancy, I dressed fancy, I talked fancy. A while back, I decided to start talkin' th' way I was raised t' talk, and for th' first time in forty years, I can understand what I'm sayin'.
-- Jan Karon

#Years #Appreciate #Fancy

Phillipians 4:13 for Pete's sake!
-- Jan Karon

#Sake

Paul said in the second epistle...the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine...they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn from the truth and wander away to myths.
-- Jan Karon

#Teacher #People #Desire

In World War One, they called it shell shock. Second time around, they called it battle fatigue. After 'Nam, it was post-traumatic stress disorder.
-- Jan Karon

#War #Stress #Battle

Sometimes you have to gag on fancy before you can appreciate plain ...
-- Jan Karon

#Appreciate #Simplicity #Fancy

Love is an actual need, an urgent requirement of the heart, he read aloud from an old essay on marriage that he found in his files.Every properly constituted human being who entertains an appreciation of loneliness...and looks forward to happiness and content feels the necessity of loving. Without it, life is unfinished...
-- Jan Karon

#Appreciation #Loneliness #Heart

And it can be a way of healing.
-- Jan Karon

#Healing #Way

Let's just say that I was raised by my grandparents.
-- Jan Karon

#Grandparent #Raised

Food is a great way of communicating,
-- Jan Karon

#Way #Communicate

Bottom line, wasn’t life itself a special occasion?
-- Jan Karon

#Special #Lines #Bottom

Writing is a way of processing our lives. And it can be a way of healing.
-- Jan Karon

#Healing #Writing #Way

My grandmother influenced me so deeply.
-- Jan Karon

#Grandmother #My Grandmother

I made real sacrifices and took big risks. But living, it seems to me, is largely about risk.
-- Jan Karon

#Real #Sacrifice #Risk

As long as you have any floor space at all, you have room for books! Just make two stacks of books the same height, place them three or four feet apart, lay a board across them, and repeat. Viola! Bookshelves!
-- Jan Karon

#Book #Two #Feet