Yancey Quotes & Sayings

This place can't be heaven, it doesn't have the right vibe. — Rick Yancey

Christians behave like spies, living in one world while our deepest allegiance belongs to another. — Philip Yancey

Prayer is a place where God and humans meet. — Philip Yancey

Those who observe suffering are tempted to reject God; those who experience it often cannot give up on God, their solace and their agony." The presence of so many in church on a wintry night proved his point. "You can protest against the evil in the world only if you believe in a good God," Volf also said. "Otherwise the protest doesn't make sense. — Philip Yancey

It would make this a perfectly normal alien invasion. — Rick Yancey

He had given in to hope, and that will kill you. It kills you before you die. Long before you die. — Rick Yancey

Ultimately, Bob is on nobody's side but Bob's. — Rick Yancey

You think I'm wasting my time, " I accuse his flawless profile. "You think Sammy's dead."
"How could I know that, Cassie?"
"I'm not saying you know that. I'm saying you THINK that."
"Does it matter what I think?"
"No, so shut up."
"I wasn't saying anything. YOU said
"
"Don't ... say ... anything."
"I'm not."
"You just did."
"I'll stop."
"But you're not. You say you will, then you just keep going."
He starts to say something, then shuts his mouth so hard, I hear his teeth click. — Rick Yancey

By killing us, they showed us the idiocy of stuff. The guy who owned this BMW? He's in the same place as the woman who owned that Kia. — Rick Yancey

Most of the great books on prayer are written by 'experts' - monks, missionaries, mystics, saints. I've read scores of them, and mainly they make me feel guilty. — Philip Yancey

That's a lot of Bens to hold in your head at once. I should give them different names to keep them straight: Ben, Has-Ben, and What-Might-Have-
Ben. — Rick Yancey

Something weird," Ben said. "You would think, with ninety-nine percent of us gone, the two percent would get along better."
Um, that would be one percent, Parish. — Rick Yancey

The apostle Paul had much to say about the immorality of individual church members, but little to say about the immorality of pagan Rome. He did not rail against the abuses in Rome - slavery, idolatry, gladiator games, political oppression, greed - even though such abuses surely offended Christians of that day every bit as much as our deteriorating society offends Christians today. — Philip Yancey

You can't make yourself believe anything," he answers softly. "But you can let yourself believe. You can allow yourself to trust. — Rick Yancey

Health and life, I would say, in the full and final sense of those words, are not what we die out of, but what we die into — Philip Yancey

Who are you Evan? If that's evan your name. Even your name. — Rick Yancey

Math?" "Yeah, math. Aren't all you Asians really good at math? — Rick Yancey

It wasn't about saving us. And it wasn't about enslaving us or herding us into reservations. It was about killing us. All of us. — Rick Yancey

night, I think I can hear the stars scraping against the sky. That's how quiet it is. After a while it's almost more than I can stand. I want to scream at the top of my lungs. I want to sing, shout, stamp my feet, clap my hands, anything to declare my presence. My conversation with the soldier had been the first words I'd said aloud in weeks. The Hum died on the tenth day after the Arrival. I was sitting in third period texting Lizbeth the last text I — Rick Yancey

The church of my own childhood, as well as that of my present and my future, comprises deeply flawed human beings struggling toward an unattainable ideal. — Philip Yancey

There was, like, this black hole where the world used to be, and we were both falling toward it. What could we hold on to? — Rick Yancey

Sci-Fi is the genre that explored both possibilities: the end of our existential crisis and the end of our existence. My novel, 'The 5th Wave,' explores the latter scenario, because, frankly, I believe it represents the likeliest outcome of an extraterrestrial encounter. In short, if they're out there, we better hope they never find us. — Rick Yancey

As a writer I have received my share of mixed reviews. Even so, as I read through stacks of vituperative letters, I got a strong sense for why the world does not automatically associate the word "grace" with evangelical Christians. Noxious — Philip Yancey

It's why a kid army makes sense. Adults don't waste their time on magical thinking. They dwell on the same inconvenient truths that — Rick Yancey

Human beings do not readily admit desperation. When they do, the kingdom of heaven draws near. — Philip Yancey

Jesus never met a disease he could not cure, a birth defect he could not reverse, a demon he could not exorcise. But he did meet skeptics he could not convince and sinners he could not convert. Forgiveness of sins requires an act of will on the receiver's part, and some who heard Jesus' strongest words about grace and forgiveness turned away unrepentant. — Philip Yancey

People want to go back to those old days, but it's probably not going to happen. — Philip Yancey

The only effective antidote to the wickedness around us is to live differently from this moment forward. — Philip Yancey

Pain narrows vision. The most private of sensations, it forces us to think of ourselves and little else. — Philip Yancey

Like everyone else, evangelicals have a right to present arguments on all the issues, but the moment we present them as part of some "Christian" platform we abandon our moral high ground. — Philip Yancey

Doubt always coexists with faith, for in the presence of certainty who would need faith at all? — Philip Yancey

Then the door flew open and Mr. Faulks told us to head over to the gym. I thought that was really smart. Get all of us in one place so the aliens didn't have to waste a lot of ammunition. — Rick Yancey

I should have bailed. That little voice had my back. That little voice is older than I am. It's older than the oldest person who ever lived. I should have listened to that voice. — Rick Yancey

God formed an alliance based on the world as it is, full of flaws, whereas prayer calls God to account for the world as it should be. — Philip Yancey

There's an old saying about the truth setting you free. Don't buy it. Sometimes the truth slams the cell door shut and throws a thousand bolts. — Rick Yancey

Cruelty isn't a personality trait. Cruelty is a habit. — Rick Yancey

I say this with care, but I wonder if a fierce, insistent desire for a miracle - even a physical healing - sometimes betrays a lack of faith rather than an abundance of it. When yearning for a miraculous resolution to a problem, do we make our loyalty to God contingent on whether he reveals himself yet again in the seen world? — Philip Yancey

Nobody knew what to do. We figured the government sort of did. The government had a plan for everything, so we assumed they had a plan for E.T. showing up uninvited and unannounced, like the weird cousin nobody in the family likes to talk about. — Rick Yancey

People who think they are free eventually end up slaves to their own desires, and those who give their freedom away to the only One you can trust with that freedom eventually get it back. — Philip Yancey

Humility is the real Christian virtue," says Nouwen. "When we come to realize that . . . only God saves, then we are free to serve, then we can live truly humble lives. — Philip Yancey

Prayer is - keeping company with God. — Philip Yancey

The bent but unbroken ones. — Rick Yancey

Puritans called marriage "the little church within the Church," a place to test and also develop spiritual character. Every day marriage calls both partners to love and forgive and stay faithful - hard work that only makes sense if we are convinced somehow that we are participating in a kind of alternate history, one set in eternity. I persevere in the difficult times in my marriage for the same reason I persevere in the difficult times in my faith: because I believe that both touch something of eternal significance. — Philip Yancey

C. S. Lewis introduced the phrase "pain, the megaphone of God." "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains," he said; "it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."3 The word megaphone is apropos, because by its nature pain shouts. When I stub my toe or twist an ankle, pain loudly announces to my brain that something is wrong. Similarly, the existence of suffering on this earth is, I believe, a scream to all of us that something is wrong. It halts us in our tracks and forces us to consider other values. — Philip Yancey

First they taught us not to trust them. Then they taught us not to trust each other. Now, they're teaching us we can't even trust ourselves. — Rick Yancey

You can only call someone crazy if there's someone else who's normal. Like good and evil. If everything was good, then nothing would be good. — Rick Yancey

Grace comes free of charge to people who do not deserve it and I am one of those people ... Now I am trying in my own small way to pipe the tune of grace. I do so because I know, more surely than I know anything, that any pang of healing or forgiveness or goodness I have ever felt comes solely from the grace of God. — Philip Yancey

Without trust there's no cooperation. And without cooperation there's no progress. History stops. — Rick Yancey

When Jesus came to earth, demons recognized him, the sick flocked to him, and sinners doused his feet and head with perfume. Meanwhile he offended pious Jews with their strict preconceptions of what God should be like. Their rejection makes me wonder, could religious types be doing just the reverse now? Could we be perpetuating an image of Jesus that fits our pious expectations but does not match the person portrayed so vividly in the Gospels? — Philip Yancey

Nothing is more painful than the loneliness of being with someone who is never completely there. — Rick Yancey

It amazed Chess how he'd really believed, almost all along, that there was nothing he'd miss, leaving this world. Only the whole of it, you ass-stupid fool.

Every bit, the living and the dead, and then some; hot sun on his back, the wind and the rain, full-out galloping into battle, feel of his guns in hand, a good hard fuck. Getting drunk - on absinthe, anger, blood. Stomping twice on some enemy's face for good measure, and laughing while he did it; the sound of Asher Rook's voice preaching, or Yancey's, singing. Ed's heartbeat under his cheek. — Gemma Files

Why are we here? We, all of us, are here because of the Creator's love, who seeks both our flourishing and our response of love and gratitude. "Find out what pleases the Lord," Paul told the Ephesians. We are here to please God. It brings God pleasure to see us thrive, and we thrive by living as God intended. — Philip Yancey

I've loved sci-fi and speculative fiction since I was a kid. It was inevitable I'd try my hand at it at some point. — Rick Yancey

I would say my being disheartened has more to do with American culture than anything else. We are becoming a very shallow culture. My goodness, the celebrity ethos has taken over completely. Turn on the television and you see that over and over. There's very little substance. And so, everything gets shorter. Everything is entertainment oriented. Our churches reflect that. A thirty-five minute sermon without a Power Point or video clips is rare these days. That's not true in other countries so much. — Philip Yancey

It is hard ... to think about those things we do not think about. — Rick Yancey

It took time for the church to come to terms with the ignominy of the cross. Church fathers forbade its depiction in art until the reign of the Roman emperor Constantine ... Now, though, the symbol is everywhere: artists beat gold into the shape of the Roman execution device, baseball players cross themselves before batting, and cancy confectioners even make chocolate crosses for the faithful to eat during Holy Week. Strange as it may seem, Christianity has become a religion of the cross
the gallows, the electric chair, the gas chamber, in modern terms. — Philip Yancey

Indifference is the ultimate evolutionary achievement. — Rick Yancey

Family is the one human institution we have no choice over. We get in simply by being born, and as a result we are involuntarily thrown together with a menagerie of strange and unlike people. Church calls for another step: to voluntarily choose to band together with a strange menagerie because of a common bond in Jesus Christ. I have found that such a community more resembles a family than any other human institution. Henri Nouwen once defined a community as "a place where the person you least want to live with always lives." His definition applies equally to the group that gathers each Thanksgiving and the group that congregates each Sunday morning. (p. 64-65, Church: Why Bother?) — Philip Yancey

I always assumed it owed more to the fact that he didn't like me. — Rick Yancey

Release what is good. — Philip Yancey

A news event in 1995 shocked both sides in the culture war controversy. Norma Leah McCorvey, the "Jane Roe" in the famous Supreme Court case of 1973, converted to Christ, got baptized, and joined the pro-life campaign. — Philip Yancey

We are humanity, the banner read. Wrong. We're pale reflections of it, weak shadows, distant echoes. — Rick Yancey

He had crossed the threshold into that room, where a single promise threw a thousand bolts: I'll find you. That promise, like all promises, created its own morality. To keep it, he would have to cross a sea of blood.
The world unloosed. The planets bound. — Rick Yancey

We in the church have humility and contrition to offer the world, not a formula for success. Almost alone in our success-oriented society, we admit that we have failed, are failing, and always will fail. — Philip Yancey

The human brain has a marvelous capacity to screen and sort experience, protecting itself against the unbearable. — Rick Yancey

Evil's greatest triumph may be its success in portraying religion as an enemy of pleasure when, in fact, religion accounts for its source: every good and enjoyable thing is the invention of a Creator who lavished gifts on the world. — Philip Yancey

Though I understand the theology behind it, the image does not bring me peace; it makes me feel sorry for the lion. It strips him of his essence, the fundamental part of his being. A lion that does not behave as a lion i snot a lion. It isn't even the lion's opposite. It's a mockery of a lion. — Rick Yancey

To conquer, you must endure not just your own suffering but the suffering of others. Indifference is the ultimate evolutionary achievement, the highest rung on nature's ladder. — Rick Yancey

Author Stephen Brown notes that a veterinarian can learn a lot about a dog owner he has never met just by observing the dog. What does the world learn about God by watching us his followers — Philip Yancey

I'm not bitching."
"Yes, you are. You're bitching like a junior miss beauty queen. — Rick Yancey

Who helped you most? Most often they (suffering people) answer by describing a quiet, unassuming person. Someone who was there whenever needed, who listened more than talked, who didn't keep glancing down at a watch, who hugged and touched, and cried. In short, someone who was available, and came on the sufferer's terms and not their own. — Philip Yancey

Unfortunately, most of my secular friends would agree with Bill Gates, who considers religion a waste of time: "There's a lot more I could be doing on Sunday morning," he told an interviewer. They view the church not as a change agent that can affect all of society but as a place where like-minded people go to feel better about themselves. — Philip Yancey

We stared into the eyes of death and death blinked first. Youd think that would make us feel invincible. It didnt — Rick Yancey

She stays away from his dreams, as if she knows not to go there, because dreams are not real but feel more than real when you're dreaming them. She loves him too much to do that. — Rick Yancey

,because if a girl loans you a highlighter she must think you're hot — Rick Yancey

The only thing harder than forgiveness is the alternative. — Philip Yancey

So often the monsters that crowd our minds are nothing more than the strange and thoroughly alien progeny of our own fearful fantasies. — Rick Yancey

The wheat had survived the hail and lightning of the summer storms, but luck could not deliver it from the cold. By the time the refugees took shelter in the old house, the wheat was dead, killed by the hard fist of a deep frost. — Rick Yancey

Why the delay? Why does God let evil and pain so flagrantly exist, even thrive, on this planet? ... He holds back for our sakes. Re-creation involves us; we are, in fact, at the center of his plan ... the motive behind all human history, is to develop us, not God. Our very existence announces to the powers in the universe that restoration is under way. Every act of faith by every one of the people of God is like the tolling of a bell, and a faith like Job's reverberates throughout the universe. — Philip Yancey

Grace is free only because the giver himself has borne the cost. — Philip Yancey

You don't feel like it's going to happen to you ... until it happens to you. — Rick Yancey

Being a disgusting, disease-carrying bug with a brain the size of a pinhead isn't something you deal with easily. It takes time to adjust to the idea. — Rick Yancey

We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." And "he who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all - how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? — Philip Yancey

He had noticed my bandaged hand.
"An accident," Warthrop said tersely.
"Dr. Warthrop chopped off my finger with a butcher knife."
Von Helrung's brow knotted up in confusion. "By accident?"
"No," I answered. "That part was on purpose. — Rick Yancey

My first favourite book was 'Are You My Mother?' A picture book about a lost bird. After that my favourites changed almost yearly. I loved everything by Roald Dahl, but my favourite was probably 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.' A librarian gave me a first edition of that book, which I treasure. — Rick Yancey

I fell in love. It felt exactly like a fall, a head-over-heels tumble into a state of unbearable lightness. The earth tilted on its axis. I did not believe in romantic love at the time, thinking it a human construct, an invention of fourteenth century Italian poets. I was as unprepared for love as I had been for goodness and beauty. Suddenly, my heart seemed swollen, too large for my chest. — Philip Yancey

Do you know a way out of here?" I ask Ben. Sammy's more trusting than I am, but the idea's worth exploring. Finding the escape pods - if they even exist - has always been the weakest part of my getaway plan.
He nods. "Do you?"
"I know a way - I just don't know the way to the way."
"The way to the way? Okay." He grins. He looks like hell, but the smile hasn't changed a bit. It lights up the tunnel like a thousand-watt bulb. "I know the way and the way to the way. — Rick Yancey

Love has a way of making us stupid, Will Henry. It blinds us to certain blatant realities, in this case the spectacularly high mortality rate among monstrumologists. Rarely do we live past forty - my father and von Helrung being the exceptions. — Rick Yancey

There's the bullshit you know that you know; the bullshit you don't know and know you don't know; and the bullshit you just think you know but really don't. — Rick Yancey

The key is this: the main benefit of giving is in its effect on the giver. Yes, people in Africa and India need my financial help, as the fund-raising appeals urgently remind me. But in truth my need to give is every bit as desperate as their need to receive. — Philip Yancey

Do you know what happened to Teacup?"
"Ran away with the spoon, what I heard. — Rick Yancey

He showed me how enormous the emptiness was by filling it. — Rick Yancey

Have you fallen in love, Will Henry?"
"That's stupid."
"What is? Love, or my question?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know? You've tried that trick once. What do you suppose it will work better the second time?"
"I don't love her. She bothers me."
"You have just defined the very thing you denied. — Rick Yancey

A philosophy may explain difficult things, but has no power to change them. The gospel, the story of Jesus' life, promises change. — Philip Yancey

More important by far is that one be honest with oneself. I have always been, and it has cost me dearly. Nothing matters but the truth. I have dedicated my life to the pursuit of it, no matter where it hides. That is the heart of science, Will Henry, the true monster we pursue. — Rick Yancey

God is present in the hungry, the homeless, the sick, and the imprisoned, as Jesus claimed in Matthew 25, and we serve God when we serve them. — Philip Yancey

The Christian knows to serve the weak not because they deserve it but because God extended his love to us when we deserved the opposite. Christ came down from heaven, and whenever his disciples entertained dreams of prestige and power he reminded them that the greatest is the one who serves. The ladder of power reaches up, the ladder of grace reaches down. — Philip Yancey

It has taken me years to distill the Gospel out of the subculture in which I first encountered it. Sadly, many of my friends gave up on the effort, never getting to Jesus because the pettiness of the church blocked the way. — Philip Yancey

How do you rid the Earth of humans? You rid the humans of their humanity. — Rick Yancey

Outiko is not hunted; Outiko hunts, the ogimaa had said. You do not call Outiko. Outiko calls you. — Rick Yancey