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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

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If You Watched A

Donald Miller

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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.

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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.

The Times We Worked Harder To Make The Day Stand Out. Our Story Demanded That We Change And So We Did.

There Are About 360,000 Churches In America, So We Could Mentor A Million Kids Within A Short Period Of Time If Everyone Signed On, Which, Of Course, Is A Pipedream, But We're Going To Reach Toward That.

The Times In My Life When I Have Been Most Happy Haven't Been The Times When I Have Had The Most Money Or The Most Freedom Or The Most Anything, But Rather When I've Been In Love Or In Community Or Right With People.

I Think We Can Provide Better Stories Through Providing Mentors, And Certainly Part Of My Story Is Providing Mentors To Kids Growing Up Without Dads. I Think Positive Male Role Models Go A Long Way In Terms Of Rescuing Kids From A Life Of Trouble.i Think Positive Male Role Models Go A Long Way In Terms Of Rescuing Kids From A Life Of Trouble.

If You Buy The Website, Maybe You'll Do Something With It. But So Far I Haven't; We'll See.

But The People Who Took The Bus Didn't Experience The City As We Experienced The City. The Pain Made The City More Beautiful. The Story Made Us Different Characters Than We Would Have Been If We Had Skipped The Story And Showed Up At The Ending An Easier Way.

Meaning Is Something We Experience More Than We Attain. It's Like Finding A Nice, Easy Current In A River That Carries You Through Life.

The Economy Is Turning Around, So That's Going To Help A Little Bit.

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.

It's Possible To Do Both As A Writer - To Engage And Have A Family And All That Good Stuff - And I Chose Not To For The Sake Of The Career.

The Early Bird Catches The Worm. But I Have Never Been One For Worms. I Am Not Sure What The Late Bird Catches, But I Will Feast With Him Today. Probably Porridge.

Things Jesus Never Said: "you Should Come With Me To Church.

I Don't Read A Lot Of Inspirational Books For Life. But For Writing, I Think The Two Best Books Are The War Of Art And William Zinsser's On Writing Well. I Read A Lot Of Classics.

What I’m Saying Is I Think Life Is Staggering And We’re Just Used To It. We All Are Like Spoiled Children No Longer Impressed With The Gifts We’re Given—it’s Just Another Sunset, Just Another Rainstorm Moving In Over The Mountain, Just Another Child Being Born, Just Another Funeral.

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.

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.

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.

I Used Love Like Money, But Love Doesn't Work Like Money. It Is Not A Commodity. When We Barter With It, We All Lose. When The Church Does Not Love It's Enemies, It Fuels Their Rage. It Makes Them Hate Us More.

The Words 'alone,' 'lonely,' And 'loneliness' Are Three Of The Most Powerful Words In The English Language. Those Words Say That We Are Human; They Are Like The Words Hunger And Thirst. But They Are Not Words About The Body, They Are Words About The Soul.

The More I Try To Impress People, The More I Separate Myself From Them. Vulnerability Attracts Love.

Christ, In Short, Asks Us To Give Everything, All Our False Redemption In The Lifeboat, All Our False Ideas About Who God Is, All Our Trust In Something Other Than God To Redeem Us. In So Doing, We Die To Our Broken Natures In Exchange For His Perfect Nature, And Find Unification With Him That Will Allow God To See Us As One.

No Love Is Conditional. If Love Is Conditional, It’s Just Some Sort Of Manipulation Masquerading As Love.

The Downside Of Being A Writer Is You Get Plenty Of Time To Overthink Your Life.

People Want To Join A Great Story. If You Want To Lead, Tell One With Your Life.

We Have To Have Positive Male Role Models.

Sometimes The Things We Want Most In Life Are The Things That Will Kill Us.

...i Want My Spirituality To Rid Me Of Hate, Not Give Me Reason For It.

It Blew My Mind That What I Was Thinking Was Actually Applicable To People's Lives, And It Certainly Revolutionized Family.

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.

Sunday Morning Church Service Is Not An Enormous Priority; Spending Time With Other Believers Is.

I Think Writers Can Get A Little Melodramatic Sometimes About Their Work, And It Helps Me Not To Do That, To Just Say, "well, This Is How I Make A Living, And I Need To Become A Very Good Craftsman."

When We Talk About The Decline Of The American Family, I Think We Have To Go Back To The Industrial Revolution.

...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.

I Can't Do It. It Would Be Like, Say, Trying To Fall In Love With Somebody, Or Trying To Convince Yourself That Your Favorite Food Is Pancakes. You Don't Decide Those Things, They Just Happen To You. If God Is Real, He Needs To Happen To Me.

Falling In Love

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.

Suffering Ceases To Be Suffering When You Have A Redemptive Perspective.

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Unconditional Love

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When One Of My Friends Becomes A Christian, Which Happens About Every 10 Years Because I Am A Sheep About Sharing My Faith, The Experience Is Euphoric. I See In Their Eyes The Trueness Of The Story.

It Made Me Wonder If The Reasons Our Lives Seem So Muddled Is Because We Keep Walking Into Scenes In Which We, Along With The People Around Us, Have No Clear Idea What We Want.

Great Stories Move Through Fear.

The Inciting Incident Is How You Get (characters) To Do Something. It's The Doorway Through Which They Can't Return, You Know. The Story Takes Care Of The Rest.

Today I Wonder Why It Is God Refers To Himself As 'father' At All. This, To Me, In Light Of The Earthly Representation Of The Role, Seems A Marketing Mistake.

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How Disappointing Would It Be Get To Heaven And Find Out God Created Life To Be Enjoyed While All We Did Was Worry?

My Sunday School Teachers Had Turned Bible Narrative Into Children's Fables. They Talked About Noah And The Ark Because The Story Had Animals In It. They Failed To Mention That This Was When God Massacred All Of Humanity.

It Wasn't Necessary To Win For The Story To Be Great, It Was Only Necessary To Sacrifice Everything.

If You Aren't Telling A Good Story, Nobody Thinks You Died Too Soon; They Just Think You Died.

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Too Much Of Our Time Is Spent Trying To Chart God On A Grid, And Too Little Is Spent Allowing Our Hearts To Feel Awe. By Reducing Christian Spirituality To Formula, We Deprive Our Hearts Of Wonder.

If The Point Of Life Is The Same As The Point Of A Story, The Point Of Life Is Character Transformation. If I Got Any Comfort As I Set Out On My First Story, It Was That In Nearly Every Story, The Protagonist Is Transformed. He's A Jerk At The Beginning And Nice At The End, Or A Coward At The Beginning And Brave At The End. If The Character Doesn't Change, The Story Hasn't Happened Yet. And If Story Is Derived From Real Life, If Story Is Just Condensed Version Of Life Then Life Itself May Be Designed To Change Us So That We Evolve From One Kind Of Person To Another.

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.

I Think If You Like Somebody You Have To Tell Them. It Might Be Embarrassing To Say It, But You Will Never Regret Stepping Up. I Know From Personal Experience, However, That You Should Not Keep Telling A Girl That You Like Her After She Tells You She Isn't Into It. You Should Not Keep Riding Your Bike By Her House Either.

Much Of The Time I’ve Spent Trying To Impress People Has Been A Waste. The Reality Is People Are Impressed With All Kinds Of Things: Intelligence, Power, Money, Charm, Talent, And So On. But The Ones We Tend To Stay In Love With Are, In The Long Run, The Ones Who Do A Decent Job Loving Us Back.

Good Writers Show Rather Than Tell. Stories Are Told In Action. Life Stories Are No Different.

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.

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.

Instead Of Asking What It Feels Like To Follow God Or Be Used By God, We Should Be Asking Who God Is, And Whether We Really Know Him. Everything Else Will Take Care Of Itself.

God Doesn't Give Us Crying, Pooping Children Because He Wants To Advance Our Careers.

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.

For Me, The Beginning Of Sharing My Faith With People Began By Throwing Out Christianity And Embracing Christian Spirituality, A Nonpolitical Mysterious System That Can Be Experienced But Not Explained.

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.

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.

I Always Thought The Bible Was More Of A Salad Thing, You Know, But It Isn't. It's A Chocolate Thing.

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.

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.

Leave. Roll The World Around On Your Tongue For A Bit. It Is A Beautiful World, Isn't It? So Strong And Forceful, The Way You Have Always Wanted To Be. And You Will Not Be Alone. You Have Never Been Alone. Don't Worry. Everything Will Still Be Here When You Get Back. It Is You Who Will Have Changed.

Everybody Has To Leave, Everybody Has To Leave Their Home And Come Back So They Can Love It Again For All New Reasons.

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.

We Live In A World Where Bad Stories Are Told, Stories That Teach Us Life Doesn't Mean Anything And That Humanity Has No Great Purpose. It's A Good Calling, Then, To Speak A Better Story. How Brightly A Better Story Shines. How Easily The World Looks To It In Wonder. How Grateful We Are To Hear These Stories, And How Happy It Makes Us To Repeat Them.

Our Lives Have A Countdown Clock That We Can't See. Mine Reminds Me To Only Do Work That Matters.

I Can No More Understand The Totality Of God Than The Pancake I Made For Breakfast Understands The Complexity Of Me

One Of The Things I Associate With God Is A Sunrise. How Many Sunrises Have You Missed Over The Years, And God Created That?

The Thing I Loved About Her Was That I Never Felt Like She Was Selling Anything. She Would Talk To God As If She Knew Him, As If She Had Talked To Him On The Phone That Day. She Was Never Ashamed Which Is The Thing With Some Christians I Had Encountered.

...a Beggar's Kingdom Is Better Than A Proud Man's Delusion.

Every Human Being Is Searching For A Deep Sense Of Meaning, And Yet We're All Chasing Success. We've Confused One For The Other.

I Heard Once That Real Love Doesn't Ask What Is In It For Me; It Just Gives Unconditionally. It Just Tries To Take The Weight Out Of Somebody Else's Pack, Lessen His Load, And If It Gets Reciprocated, That's Great, But That Isn't What You Did It For.

I Love To Give To Charity, But I Don't Want To Be Charity. This Is Why I Have So Much Trouble With Grace.

Most Of Us Are Waiting. We're Waiting For Something Interesting To Happen. And I Think We're Going To Wait Forever If We Don't Do Something More Interesting With Our Lives.

The Greatest Stories Go To Those Who Don’t Give In To Fear.

Humans Are Designed To Seek Comfort And Order, And So If They Have Comfort And Order, They Tend To Plant Themselves, Even If Their Comfort Isn't All That Comfortable. And Even If They Secretly Want For Something Better.

Half The Time I Pick Up A Book, That's What I'm Trying To Get.

I'm Not A Pastor; I've Never Been On Staff At A Church.

The Thing About Being Irresponsible Is It's Only Cute Till You Are About Twenty-two Or So, Then It Becomes A Liability. One Day You Wake Up Under A Pizza Box, The Television Blaring In Your Bedroom, The Laundry Piled Up Over What Might Be A Bedside Table, And You Ask Yourself: 'how Did My Life Get Like This? Why Don't People Like Me? Didn't I Have A Cat And What Is That Smell?'

There Is Something Beautiful About A Billion Stars Held Steady By A God Who Knows What He Is Doing.

I Do Not Believe A Person Can Take Two Issues From Scripture, Those Being Abortion And Gay Marriage, And Adhere To Them As Sins, Then Neglect Much Of The Rest And Call Himself A Fundamentalist Or Even A Conservative. The Person Who Believes The Sum Of His Morality Involves Gay Marriage And Abortion Alone, And Neglects Health Care And World Trade And The Environment And Loving His Neighbor And Feeding The Poor Is, By Definition, A Theological Liberal, Because He Takes What He Wants From Scripture And Ignores The Rest.

Earthly Love… Is Temporal And Slight So That Is Has To Be Given Again And Again In Order For Us To Feel Any Sense Of Security; But God’s Love, God’s Voice And Presence, Would Instill Our Souls With Such Affirmation We Would Need Nothing More And Would Cause Us To Love Other People So Much We Would Be Willing To Die For Them.

It Confuses Me That Christian Living Is Not Simpler. The Gospel, The Very Good News, Is Simple.

You Never Question The Truth Of Something Until You Have To Explain It To A Skeptic.

The Reason I Like Writing A Memoir Is Because It Isn't Preachy.

If What You Are Doing Is Important, You Will Encounter Resistance. If What You Are Doing Isn't Important It Will Be Easy.

Of His New Book, Don Says: “it Might Be The Greatest Book Ever Written. I Don’t Think Anybody Is Going To Read A Book Again After They Read My New One. I Think God Is Proud Of Me. I Am Going To Make A Killing Off This Thing And I’m Going To Use The Money To Go To Space.

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.

When We Think Too Much About The Opinions Of Others, We Are Letting Them Edit A Book God Has Written.

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.

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.

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.

By Accepting God's Love For Us, We Fall In Love With Him, And Only Then Do We Have The Fuel We Need To Obey.

Falling In Love

Many Of Our Attempts To Understand Christian Faith Have Only Cheapened It. I Can No More Understand The Totality Of God Than The Pancake I Made For Breakfast Understands The Complexity Of Me. The Little We Do Understand, That Grain Of Sand Our Minds Are Capable Of Grasping, Those Ideas Such As God Is Good, God Feels, God Loves, God Knows All, Are Enough To Keep Our Hearts Dwelling On His Majesty And Otherness Forever.

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.

I Had Some Friends Commenting Me Books, But Mostly It Was People I Didn't Know. But They're Fans. They're Fans Of The Books, So They Have A Working Knowledge Of How I Write, And They Know What They Like And What They Don't Like. I'm Really Grateful For Their Feedback.

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.

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.

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.

All The Trees Are Losing Their Leaves, And Not One Of Them Is Worried.

When I Started Studying The Issue And Issues Related To Fatherlessness, I Realized I Had All Of Them. Fear Of Intimacy, Fear Of Commitment, Poor Work Ethic, Just Stuff That You Don't Have When You Don't Have A Man In Your Life To Look You In The Eye And Say, "you're Good," Or "good Job."

And So I Have Come To Understand That Strength, Inner Strength, Comes From Receiving Love As Much As It Comes From Giving It.

I Want To Start Replacing My “fix” Response With An “enjoy” Response And Just Let People Be Themselves.

In The Age Of Information, Ignorance Is A Choice.

At The Time, I Didn't Know What Forgiveness Meant. I Wouldn't Really Know What Forgiveness Meant For Another Year, Until My Pastor, Rick Mckinley, Happened To Spell It Out In A Sermon. He Said That When You Forgive, You Bear The Burden Somebody Has Given You Without Holding Them Accountable.

We Don't Think Of Our Flaws As The Glue That Binds Us To The People We Love, But They Are. Grace Only Sticks To Your Imperfections.

When You Stop Expecting People To Be Perfect, You Can Like Them For Who They Are. And When You Stop Expecting Material Possessions To Complete You, You'd Be Surprised At How Much Pleasure You Get In Material Possessions. And When You Stop Expecting God To End All Your Troubles, You'd Be Surprised How Much You Like Spending Time With God.

In Exchange For Our Humility And Willingness To Accept The Charity Of God, We Are Given A Kingdom. And A Beggar's Kingdom Is Better Than A Proud Man's Delusion.

We Don't Naturally Want To Take Responsibility For Our Lives. We Want To Give The Responsibility To Someone Else. We Blame Them When Our Lives Aren't Good.

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.

If You Want To Bond With Your Friends, Do Something Very Hard With Them, Something That You Won't Be Able To Do Alone.

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.

...she Wanted God To Make Sense. He Doesn't. He Will Make No More Sense To Me Than I Will Make Sense To An Ant.

If The Abortion Issue Is Important To Me, This Is How You Tackle That Issue.

The Truth Is There Are A Million Steps, And We Don't Even Know What The Steps Are, And Worse, At Any Given Moment We May Not Be Willing Or Even Able To Take Them; And Still Worse, They Are Different For You And They Are Always Changing. I Have Come To Believe The Sooner We Will Fall In Love With The God Who Keeps Shaking Things Up, Keeps Changing The Path, Keeps Rocking The Boat To Test Our Faith In Him, Teaching Us To Not Rely On Easy Answers, Bullet Points, Magic Mantras, Or Genies In Lamps, But Rather In His Guidance, His Existence, His Mercy, And His Love.

Falling In Love

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.

If A Piece Of Genius Comes, It Comes, And It If Doesn't, It Doesn't.

There's A Lot Of Letters, And A Lot Of People Come Say "hi" At Book Signings, But I'm Amazed At How Normal Everybody Is.

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.

I Started Storyline After I'd Accomplished All My Goals And Still Wasn't Happy. I'd Become A New York Times Bestselling Author, Which Was My Goal From High School, And Yet I Was Less Happy After Accomplishing My Goals Than I Was Before.

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.

Knowing Who You Are

Self-discipline Will Never Make Us Feel Righteous Or Clean; Accepting God's Love Will.

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.

A Story Is A Character Who Wants Something And Overcomes Conflict To Get It.

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.

God Made A Whole Beautiful Earth And Decided To Put You In It, To Experience All Of This Beauty. You Can't Do That Watching Television All The Time.

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.

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.

She Knows Who She Is. She Just Forgot For A Little While.

I Don't Find Anyone More Noble Than Jesus.

I Know, From The Three Visits I Made To Him, The Blended Composite Of Love And Fear That Exists Only In A Boy's Notion Of His Father.

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.

Christians Might Say That You Can't Live A More Meaningful Life Without Jesus. Well, That's Absolutely Not True. You Can. You Can Enjoy A Sunrise Whether You Know Jesus Or Not.

Everybody Wants To Be Fancy And New. Nobody Wants To Be Themselves. I Mean, Maybe People Want To Be Themselves, But They Want To Be Different, With Different Clothes Or Shorter Hair Or Less Fat. It's A Fact. If There Was A Guy Who Just Liked Being Himself And Didn't Want To Be Anybody Else, That Guy Would Be The Most Different Guy In The World And Everybody Would Want To Be Him.

I Didn't Know How Story Worked. So, When Writing The Screenplay, People Introduced Me To The Science Of It. And I'm Grateful. I'll Probably Use That Information For The Rest Of My Career, In Terms Of Writing Novels Or Writing Stories. And Then, Of Course, To Help Me Live A Better Story, A More Meaningful Story

The Most Attractive Characteristic In A Person Is The Story They Are Telling The World. We Stop And Stare At Stories.

I Stay Away From Churches In Which I Feel Like I Have To Pretend I'm A Better Person Than I Am. That Sort Of Thing Moves My Faith Backwards.

I Have Sometimes Wondered If The Greatest Desire Of Man Is To Be Known And Loved Anyway.

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.

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.

I Believe The Greatest Trick Of The Devil Is Not To Get Us Into Some Sort Of Evil But Rather Have Us Wasting Time. This Is Why The Devil Tries So Hard To Get Christians To Be Religious. If He Can Sink A Man's Mind Into Habit, He Will Prevent His Heart From Engaging God. I Was Into Habit.

I Think That Every Living Person, Every Person Who Is Awake To The Functioning Principles Within His Reality Has A Moment Where He Stops Blaming The Problems In The World On Group Thinking, On Humanity And Authority, And Starts To Face Himself. I Hate This More Than Anything. This Is The Hardest Principle Within Christian Spirituality For Me To Deal With. The Problem Is Not Out There, The Problem Is The Needy Beast Of A Thing Living In My Chest.

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.

Flattery Has A Short Battery Life, But Reminding People They Are Amazing And Precious And Wanted And Works Of Art Can Truly Change Their Lives.

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.

The Very Scary Thing About Religion, To Me, Is That People Actually Believe God Is Who They Think He Is.

I Think Each Of Us Can, Through Our Writing, Discover Our Super Power

If We Knew How Much God Loved Us And Was For Us, We’d Talk To Him All Day Long.

But Playing Your Music As Loud As You Want And Coming Home Drunk Aren't Real Life. Real Life, It Turns Out, Is Diapers And Lawnmowers, Decks That Need Painting, A Wife That Needs To Be Listened To, Kids That Need To Be Taught Right From Wrong, A Checkbook, An Oil Change, A Sunset Behind A Mountain, Laughter At A Kitchen Table, Too Much Wine, A Chipped Tooth, And A Screaming Child.

The Trouble With Deep Belief Is That It Costs Something. And There Is Something Inside Me, Some Selfish Beast Of A Subtle Thing That Doesn't Like The Truth At All Because It Carries Responsibility, And If I Actually Believe These Things I Have To Do Something About Them. It Is So, So Cumbersome To Believe Anything. And It Isn't Cool.

People Love To Have Lived A Great Story, But Few People Like The Work It Takes To Make It Happen.

As A Human, I Am Flawed In That It Is Difficult For Me To Consider Others Before Myself. It Feels Like I Have To Fight Against This Force, This Current Within Me That, More Often Than Not, Wants To Avoid Serious Issues And Please Myself, Buy Things For Myself, Feed Myself, Entertain Myself, And All Of That.

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.

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.”

Passion About Nothing Is Like Pouring Gasoline In A Car Without Wheels. It Isn't Going To Lead Anybody Anywhere.

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.

Being A Christian Is More Like Falling In Love Than Understanding A Series Of Ideas.

Falling In Love

There Are Things You Cannot Understand, And You Must Learn To Live With This. Not Only Must You Learn To Live With This, You Must Learn To Enjoy This.

We Shouldn’t Be Afraid To Embrace Whimsy, That Nagging Idea That Life Could Be Magical; It Could Be Special If We Were Only Willing To Take A Few Risks.

It Is Worthy Of Note That The Chinese And Japanese Characters For Money And Gold Are The Same.

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.

Good Stories Must Travel Through Conflict. And In Epic Stories, The Conflict Must Become Unbearable.

It Was A Haunting Feeling, The Sort Of Sensation You Get When You Wonder Whether You Are Two People, The Other Of Which Does Things You Can't Explain, Bad And Terrible Things.

Fear Is A Manipulative Emotion That Can Trick Us Into Living A Boring Life.

When You Write, You're Alone In A Room. And When Someone Reads A Book, They're Alone In A Room, Too, Usually. It's A Really Intimate Exchange. And So People Ask Me Where I Get The Boldness To Talk About This Or That, But I Didn't Feel Like It Required Any Sort Of Courage, Because I Was Alone. Sometimes It Feels Weird For People To Read It.

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.

I Listened So Hard Because It Felt Like, While She Was Telling Me Stories, She Was Massaging My Soul, Letting Me Know That I Was Not Alone, That I Will Never Have To Be Alone, That There Are Friends And Family And Churches And Coffee Shops. I Was Not Going To Be Cast Into Space.

Do I Still Think There Will Be A Day When All The Wrongs Are Made Right, When Our Souls Find The Completion They Are Looking For? I Do. But When All Things Are Made Right, It Won’t Be Because Of Some Preacher Or Snake-oil Salesman Or Politician Or Writer Making Promises In His Book. I Think, Instead, This Will Be Done By Jesus. And It Will Be At A Wedding. And There Will Be A Feast.

And Through A Dark Night Of The Soul, I Came To Realize That Salvation Happens Through A Mysterious, Indefinable, Relational Interaction With Jesus In Which We Become One With Him. I Realized Christian Conversion Worked More Like Falling In Love Than Understanding A Series Of Concepts Of Ideas. This Is Not To Say There Are No True Ideas, It Is Only To Say There Is Something Else, Something Beyond.

Falling In Love

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