Hannah Brencher Quotes & Sayings

I always thought New York City would be romantic, like a boyfriend who would kiss my hand and throw rocks at my window to get my attention. — Hannah Brencher

Looking back, I wish that everyone could have that sort of moment: a moment where you realize that your hands are so impossibly small and this world is so impossibly big. And the two don't seem to add up. Maybe recognizing the smallness of your own hands is just the very first step to changing anything at all. — Hannah Brencher

I had to take the first step for myself. — Hannah Brencher

I'm a do-something sort of person and that doesn't really mix well with the commuters of New York. — Hannah Brencher

Hope can be a mighty powerful thing when you decide to tangle it into a journey. Hope can shake things up a bit. It'll convince you that even if you don't know what direction you're headed in, something will meet you at the end. — Hannah Brencher

One of my roommates called it 'agape.' I'd never heard the word before, but it was her favorite word, and I was instantly enamored because the definition of agape is loving a person for exactly who they are - not who we hope they'll become with enough fixing. — Hannah Brencher

The worship had already begun. It was my favorite part about the whole thing. There was something electric about everyone lifting their hands up to the ceiling as if they were trying to pull things down from heaven. They reached and they reached and I couldn't help but wish I would find a reason to reach my hands up too. — Hannah Brencher

If joy could break windows and hallelujahs could break floorboards, this church would have been broken down by noon. — Hannah Brencher

I believe now that we're the enemy to the things we really want for our lives. We get really good at telling ourselves ugly lies on repeat. — Hannah Brencher

All those dotted lines were just the parts of the story where she would get on the ground and get her hands dirty with the mess of it all. The mess and the glory of other people's hearts and heart songs. She would learn it would take grit, and guts, and courage to make a difference. But the world will always need people who care enough to make a difference, so she needed to not miss her casting call. — Hannah Brencher

God is a lot of things to a lot of people but I don't think He is a cheap party host with limited grace to give out. — Hannah Brencher

I don't know what actually goes down in heaven, if heaven has a grand staircase or a theater where you get to see your impact in a "Crash" kind of cinematic adventure, but I do know our stories work that way--the imprints of ourselves we press into the palms of others have the power to be passed and passed through the hands of many. That the smallest things we do, never thinking twice about them, might be the very things that keep a person alive, and breathing, and standing on that day. I've stopped doubting that kind of impact because believing in it - believing in miracles in the mud of the mundane - gives you so much more purpose than not believing in it at all. — Hannah Brencher

I learned vulnerability is a bit like those Russian nesting dolls, the ones that get smaller and smaller in size when you twist the top off and pull another one out. In the end, you're left with the tiniest doll, that one nugget. No more layers to take off. Nothing left but a surprise, the surprise of finding out the littlest doll is the most solid of them all. It doesn't hide inside of itself. — Hannah Brencher

It's easier to let fear win. Even though love covers all things, fear is what keeps us silent and keeps words unsaid. Fear keeps us standing in one place. Eventually, when it wins, it means we never got the courage to say what we needed to say. But the words are needed. They won't always fix things or mend things or make things better. They won't bring someone back. They won't stop a good-bye. They won't be perfect. But they'll be true. And maybe that is all we have ever needed from one another: true words written with a love that feels too big to pin down to a page with measly little syllables. — Hannah Brencher

And Jesus just acts like he's really annoyed with the guy and starts shooting back commandments. But right before he tells the man he needs to go and sell all his belongings to follow him, there's this really strange sentence. It's like it doesn't belong there. It's easy to miss. 'Jesus saw him and loved him.' The line was staring back at me through my screen. He saw him. And he loved him. Instantly. Like it was that easy. Like the man didn't need to do A, B, C, and D to just be loved. He was loved. He was seen. He was known. Already. He just had to show up and annoy Jesus. Showing up was all it took. And then being willing to let it all go. — Hannah Brencher

I'd sit the younger version of myself down and ask,'Yo, girl, what's the deal? Why so happy? Why must everything end so poetically? — Hannah Brencher

Grace is letting something else - something so much bigger than you - carry you home. It's having and wanting nowhere else to be but in a moment that wants you and takes you just as you are. — Hannah Brencher

Because you deserve dignity, beyond anything else in this world. You deserve a God, and a faith, and a belief that finds you dignified at the core. — Hannah Brencher

It was about some real belief that God wasn't just going to show up on Sunday and cop out by Tuesday morning. — Hannah Brencher

I could feel God. It was like he was setting fine fingerprints all over the moment. I could feel him in it, as if he were saying to me, "Girl, I'm gonna blow the hinges off anything you think a love letter is, was , or could be. If you would just release the grip, I could turn your whole like into a love letter. — Hannah Brencher

And New York City is details too... It's full of people who have no idea they're really just art to other passersby. There are probably thousands of them who head home feeling worthless, like failures, never fully knowing the impact they made on a complete stranger just by walking out to face the world that day. Never fully knowing they were the beautiful spot in someone else's ordinary day. — Hannah Brencher

...we've never really been alone. Maybe lonely, but never alone. — Hannah Brencher

He probably would have looked at me sideways and asked why I was trying to learn how to change my life by reading a book. — Hannah Brencher

Finally, finally, this is what bravery looks like. This is what courage looks like. It has nothing to do with dominating the day, every single day. It has to do with showing up and speaking truth. One true sentence after one true sentence. — Hannah Brencher

They weren't just people. And they weren't strangers. They were my neighbors. And I didn't know how to help them. — Hannah Brencher

I think it's easy to stay angry at a world that never promises you invincibility but still manages to break your heart with the way some moments can make you feel so infinite. — Hannah Brencher

I want to seem put together in front of a person who earns a living trying to help me get all the pieces back together. — Hannah Brencher

We could build entire cities out of the stories of loneliness. — Hannah Brencher

Fear and failure, they go hand in hand. They're like dance partners with great rhythm. — Hannah Brencher

I'm just the product of my grandmother telling me for years she would see my name on the spines of books. — Hannah Brencher

Being seen somewhere at 2 a.m. through a "like" or retweet didn't actually fill me. — Hannah Brencher

There is a definite romance that buzzes and ticks and takes you by the elbow when Christmastime arrives in the city. It's something about the lights. The way the wreaths dress up the streetlamps. How everyone seems to commute home at night with much more purpose, and I often found myself wondering what they were barreling back for. If it was a tree that needed to be decorated, or cookies needing to be frosted, or just someone worth holding all winter long. — Hannah Brencher

But maybe that is why some people walk into your life - to tip you over and pour you out. Maybe some people storm into your life just to tell you they're not supposed to be there. That you can't take them or anyone with you wherever you're going next. Maybe not every person we encounter is a love story. Maybe some are wake-up calls. — Hannah Brencher

The two had very little figured out. They were trying though. They fell in love. They looked for God. They loved constructing miracles out of the mundane. Above all things, they cheered for each other. And they made each other stronger. And that meant everything. — Hannah Brencher

Don't always get so caught up in doing what you love. Instead, do what is necessary. Do what others need. — Hannah Brencher

I know you're worried about me. Not because you think I am incapable but because you secretly have always worried that life would go by without my ever learning how to stomp in the puddles or fall in love. I can promise you I'll learn. If anyone is a teacher for that kind of stuff, it has got to be New York. — Hannah Brencher

I know when I get real with myself, and I actually look at the world I'm growing up in, I want a savior. I'm sure of that. On most days I could not tell you what coffee I want, what train I want to take, or the jacket I want to wear, but I've always ached for a savior. The kind who gets right up close to your face and says, "Babycakes, this ain't your battle. Stand back, I'm here now. — Hannah Brencher

I feel things too deeply. — Hannah Brencher

They were the kind of words you read back and every lettered limb surprises you because you never knew you really felt those things the whole time. — Hannah Brencher

That's what I think about people in our lives with plane tickets - you've gotta let them go. Let them see what's out there. — Hannah Brencher

I just remember thinking the stars were so reliable. I felt it as I drew my legs in close to my body and wrapped my arms around them; the stars are reliable, unlike any other thing in this crazy world. Leaves fall off the trees. Snow melts. Rain washes away all the things we wrote on the pavement. But the stars are relentless in shining. When it came to talking with God, I wanted to believe He was like those stars. If I looked, He'd be there. I'd lost a lot of things in the years that led up to this point - shoes and keys and books and boyfriends - but I never lost that hope. — Hannah Brencher

And I was looking for escape routes all the time. Ways to not fully be there, to be distracted by other lives, the lives of people I knew from high school and college that were happening in different states and cities. I would waste hours comparing my life to theirs, sitting the two of them side by side and circling the things that seemed out of place in my own life, like the "What's Wrong?" pictures in the back of the Highlights magazines. I don't exactly know what happened that night after — Hannah Brencher

...the littlest doll is the most solid of them all. It doesn't hide inside itself. — Hannah Brencher

It's always in those moments when you've shunned God, or you've gone ahead as if you don't need Him, that you find yourself crawling back with pathetic little attempts to get His attention because suddenly you're weak and you need to convince yourself you're not alone on the bathroom floor. — Hannah Brencher

A lot of us might never reach the point of realizing that by standing out, by actually being the people we say we want to be, we get to set ourselves free. Not in all capacities, but definitely in some. — Hannah Brencher

She didn't know if it was God. She wasn't really sure what to call it. She just knew she believe in unconditional love. And that was really all that mattered. — Hannah Brencher

It almost feels like at some point life whacks you on top of the head and hands you a list of all the things you can keep. The list is surprisingly long. You can keep letters. You can keep trying. You can keep secrets and you can try your hardest to keep promises. You can keep your eyes on the road. You can keep his sweatshirt, the one he left on the living room floor. You can keep photos and you can keep the memories. But you cannot keep people. People are not things - you can't keep them. — Hannah Brencher

The stars are reliable, unlike any other thing in this crazy world. Leaves fall off the trees. Snow melts. Rain washes away all the things we wrote on the pavement. But the stars are relentless in shining. — Hannah Brencher

Some people are dotted lines and other people are destinations. Some people get you somewhere and some people are just a place to be, all in themselves. But you cannot force those dotted lines into destinations. It doesn't really work that way. — Hannah Brencher