Donald Miller Quotes & Sayings

Let probability and sample size do the heavy lifting. — Donald Miller

The repentance we are called to is about choosing one audience over another. — Donald Miller

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

More than my questions about the efficacy of social actions were my questions about my own motives. Do i want social justice for the oppressed or do i jusy want to be known as a socially active person? I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I dont have to watch the evening news to see the world is bad, i only have to look at myself. I am not brow beating here, i am only saying that true charge , true living giving, God honoring change would have to start with the individual. I was the very problem i had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read I am the problem — Donald Miller

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

I didnt like being reminded about how self-absorbed i was. I wanted to be over this, done with this. I didnt want to live in a broken world or a broken me. I wasnt trying to weasel out of anything. I just wasnt in the mood of being on the earth that night. I get like that sometimes when it rains, or when i see certain sad movies. — Donald Miller

Some people skip through life. Others are dragged through it. I sometimes wonder if we are moving through time, or whether time is moving through us. Light, unlike anything else in the universe is not effected by time. Light exists outside of time.. It is still a mystery to physicists. — Donald Miller

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

If you want to bond with your friends, do something very hard with them, something that you won't be able to do alone. — Donald Miller

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. — Donald Miller

If you aren't telling a good story, nobody thinks you died too soon; they just think you died. — Donald Miller

I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing. — Donald Miller

Television drives me crazy sometimes because everybody is so good-looking, and yet you walk through the aisles of the grocery stores, and nobody looks like that. — Donald Miller

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

One of the things I associate with God is a sunrise. How many sunrises have you missed over the years, and God created that? — Donald Miller

Imagine how a man's life would be if he trusted that he was loved by God. How could he interact with the poor and not show partiality, he could love his wife easily and not expect her to redeem him, he would be slow to anger because redemption was no longer at stake, he could be wise and giving with his money because money no longer represented points, he could give up on formulaic religion, knowing that checking stuff off a spiritual to-do list was a worthless pursuit, he would have confidence and the ability to laugh at himself, and he could love people without expecting anything in return. It would be quite beautiful, really. — Donald Miller

I'm not a pastor; I've never been on staff at a church. — Donald Miller

God has spoken, and when God speaks, the majority has spoken. — Donald Miller

Remarkably, the most common regret of the dying was this: they wish they'd had the courage to live a life true to themselves and not the life others expected of them. — Donald Miller

The entire world is falling apart because nobody will admit they are wrong. — Donald Miller

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

Your life is a blank page. You write on it. — Donald Miller

I posted chapters online and let people give feedback, and I was surprised at how much of that feedback I actually used for the book.I posted chapters online and let people give feedback, and I was surprised at how much of that feedback I actually used for the book. It was a different process for me, but I liked it. — Donald Miller

It seems like, if you really knew the God who understands the physics of our existence, you would operate a little more cautiously, a little more compassionately, a little less like you are the center of the universe. — 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

WE'RE ALL AMATEURS WHEN IT COMES TO LOVE and relationships. I — Donald Miller

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

Here are two things I found taking the long road, though: Applause is a quick fix. And love is an acquired taste. — Donald Miller

I had always suspected language was quite limited in its ability to communicate the intricate mysteries of truth. — 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

Still i knew because of my own feelings there was something wrong with me and i knew it wasnt only me. I knew it was everybody. It was like a bacteria or a cancer or a trance. It wasnt on the skin, it was in the soul. It showed itself in lonliness, lust, anger , jealousy and depression. It had people screwed up bad everywhere you went- at the store, at home, at church, it was ugly and deep. Lots of singers on the radio were singing about it and cops had jobs because of it. It was as if we were broken I thought, as if we were never supposed to feel these sticky emotions. It was as if we were cracked, coudlnt love right, couldnt feel good things for a long before screwing it all up.
I am talking about the broken quality of life. — Donald Miller

There is a time when every person who encounters Jesus, who believes Jesus is the Son of God, decides that they will spend their life following Him. Some people, like the Apostle Paul, make this decision the minute they meet Him, the minute they become a Christian. Others, like the Apostle Peter, endure years of half-hearted commitment and spiritual confusion before leaping in with all their passion. Still others may enjoy some benefits of God's love and grace without entering into the true joy of a marriage with their maker. — Donald Miller

When I walked into the Christian section of a bookstore, the message was clear: Faith is something you do alone. Rick does not have much tolerance for people living alone. He's like Bill Clinton in that he feels everyone's pain. If Rick thinks somebody is lonely, he can't sleep at night. He wants us all to live with each other and play nice so he can get some rest. Tortured soul. — Donald Miller

Perhaps one of the reasons I've avoided standing on the point toward the horizon is the second you stand up and point toward a horizon, you realize how much there is to lose. — Donald Miller

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

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

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

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. — Donald Miller

I wondered about the story we were writing and wanted even more to write a better story for myself, something that leaves a beautiful feeling even as the credits roll. — Donald Miller

In an age in which we can project an image and score that image based on immediate Facebook and Twitter feedback, thus making a video game of life and a false-reality composed of lies, what gets lost is a joyful obsession with the work we create from the purest of motives, a sheer joy in the act of creation itself that causes us to lose ourselves in something else, and in a way die to ourselves over the absolute love of a thing we are breathing into life. — Donald Miller

You'd think God would come right out and tell us what to do in the Bible, but He doesn't. He mostly tells stories, and He rarely stops the story to say what the point is. He just lets the characters and conflict hang in the air like smoke. — Donald Miller

Sometimes when I watch my dog, I think about how good life can be, if we only lose ourselves in our stories. Lucy doesn't read self-help books about how to be a dog; she just IS a dog. All she wants to do is chase ducks and sticks and do other things that make both her and me happy. It makes me wonder if that was the intention for man, to chase sticks and ducks, to name animals, to create families, and to keep looking back at God to feed off his pleasure at our pleasure. — 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

I took William Zinsser's advice that you write to yourself and you hope that there are people out there who are like you. — Donald Miller

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. — Donald Miller

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. — Donald Miller

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

The human heart uses the tools of reality to create elements of story, and the human heart responds to climax in the structure of story, this means that climax, or point of decision, could very well be something that exists in the universe. — Donald Miller

The reward you get from a story is always less than you thought it would be, and the work is harder than you imagined. The point of a story is never about the ending, remember. It's about your character getting molded in the hard work of the middle. At some point the shore behind you stops getting smaller, and you paddle and wonder why the same strokes that used to move you now only rock the boat. You got the wife, but you don't know if you like her anymore and you've only been married for five years. You want to wake up and walk into the living room in your underwear and watch football and let your daughters play with the dog because the far shore doesn't get closer no matter how hard you paddle.

The shore you left is just as distant, and there is no going back; there is only the decision to paddle in place or stop, slide out of the hatch, and sink into the sea. Maybe there's another story at the bottom of the sea. Maybe you don't have to be in this story anymore. — 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

I know now, from experience, that the path to joy winds through this dark valley. I think every well-adjusted human being has dealt squarely with his or her own depravity. — Donald Miller

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

A half million books, all of them smelling like dust and ink, two terrible smells that blend mystically to make something beautiful. — Donald Miller

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

Ultimately, I believe that God loves and wants a relationship with every human being, but with Laura I could feel God's urgency. — Donald Miller

She knows who she is. She just forgot for a little while. — Donald Miller

It's funny what happens to you when part of your heart gets born inside somebody else. — Donald Miller

I DON'T KNOW WHY LOVING A WOMAN IS SCARIER than climbing a mountain or sailing an ocean, but it is. A mountain can hurt your body and an ocean can drown you, but in the end you're still a man for conquering them. Dead or alive, you're still a man. A woman, though, can rob your manhood and reduce you to a boy at the drop of a word. — 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

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

All this gave way to my first encounter with guilt, which is still something entirely inscrutable to me, as if aliens were sending transmissions from another planet, telling me there is a right and a wrong in the universe. — Donald Miller

Life is a story. You and I are telling stories; they may suck, but we are telling stories. And we tell stories about the things that we want. So you go through your bank account, and those are things you have told stories about. — 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

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. — 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

To change the world you'll need a pen. — Donald Miller

It isn't about what you don't get done; it's about what you do get done. — Donald Miller

If you think about it, we get robbed of the mystery of being alive. I think we get robbed of the glory of it because we don't remember how we got here. When you get born, you wake up slowly to everything. From birth to 26, God is slowly turning on the lights, and you are groggy and pointing at things, and say "Circle," and, "Blue,", and, "Car," and, "Sex," and then, "Job," and, "Healthcare". The experience is so slow, you could easily come to believe life isn't that big of a deal, that life isn't staggering. Life IS staggering, and we are just too used to it. — 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

I think it's very hard for us, for Christians, to understand that it's okay to read a book, for instance, on how to manage your time. There's nothing wrong with that. — Donald Miller

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

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

You're always weighing whether you should be that accessible or not, but my personality is naturally just to throw it all out there, so I'm much more comfortable with doing thatmy personality is naturally just to throw it all out there, so I'm much more comfortable with doing that. — 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

One of the things I love about our source text as Christians, the Bible, is that it teaches us not to avoid conflict. And it teaches us that before the fall of man, in Paradise, there was conflict. God wants conflict to be a part of your life. — Donald Miller

The great tragedy of our lives seems to be that we are smart enough to ask the questions of meaning but too dumb to really figure it out. — 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

Somehow I had come to believe that because a person is in need, they are candidates for sympathy, not just charity. It was not that I wanted to buy her groceries, the government was already doing that. I wanted to buy her dignity. And yet, by judging her, I was the one taking her dignity away. — Donald Miller

I'm a writer because, at an early age, I became convinced it was the one thing I could do to earn people's respect. It's true in the process I learned to love words and ideas and these days I actually like to get lost in the writing process. But the early fuel, the early motivation, was all about becoming a person worth loving. — Donald Miller

Half the time I pick up a book, that's what I'm trying to get. — Donald Miller

There is something inside me, some selfish beast of a subtle thing that doesn't like truth at all because it carries responsibility. — Donald Miller

half the feeling of home is usually a person. — 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

About the time I told God that He didn't exist, I was desperate for an identity. — Donald Miller

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. The next day, when I was walking with — Donald Miller

It's all connected with the belief human love is conditional. But human love isn't conditional. No love is conditional. If love is conditional, it's just some sort of manipulation masquerading as love. — Donald Miller

people can't live without a story, without a role to play. — Donald Miller

Humans are constantly, and in every way, comparing themselves to one another, which, given the brief nature of their existence, seems an oddity and, for that matter, a waste. Nevertheless, this is the driving influence behind every human's social development, their emotional health and sense of joy, and, sadly, their greatest tragedies. It is as though something that helped them function and live well has gone missing, and they are pining for that missing thing in all sorts of odd methods, none of which are working. The greater tragedy is that very few people understand they have the disease. This seems strange as well because it is obvious. To be sure, it is killing them, and yet sustaining their social and economic systems. They are an entirely beautiful people with a terrible problem. — Donald Miller

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

For a moment sitting there above the city, i imagined life outside of narcissism. I wondered how beautiful it might be to think of others as more important than myself. I wondered how peaceful it might be not to be pestered by that childish voice that wants for pleasure and attention. I wondered how it would be like not to live in a house of mirrors, everywhere i go being reminded of myself. — Donald Miller

Her relationships were more about shared memories and common values than about strategic partnerships to help each other succeed. — Donald Miller

Paul was terribly personal. The books I like are the ones that make you feel like you are with a person who is being quite vulnerable, telling you all sorts of stuff that is personal, and that's the thing Paul did that makes me like him. — Donald Miller

People are lonely. They want company and your book can provide them company and a little bit of hope. And there's nothing wrong with that. — Donald Miller

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

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

I posted the first three chapters and I had enough people say that chapter two was dragging that I cut it out just before the book went to press. And I'm glad I did. The book is a lot better without it. — Donald Miller

We both have our independence and freedom, but we have those things with each other. It's a paradox, but it works. It all reminded me of what my friend Henry Cloud told me, that when two people are entirely and completely separate they are finally compatible to be one. Nobody's self-worth lives inside of another person. Intimacy means we are independently together. — Donald Miller

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

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

Those of us who are never satisfied with our accomplishments secretly believe nobody will love us unless we're perfect. — Donald Miller