Quotes from Donald Miller

Oprah Winfrey, an undeniably successful guide to millions, once explained the three things every human being wants most are to be seen, heard, and understood. This is the essence of empathy.

Work on your character and a good life will come to you.

It makes me wonder how many people have damaged their own lives by mistaking enablement for grace?

In my opinion the misappropriation of the longing for God has caused a lot of people a great deal of pain. In fact, I wondered if some of my early mistakes in relationships weren't partly because I sought to find resolution for the longing through a woman, a burden no romantic partner should have to bear. How many relationships have been ruined by two people attempting to squeeze the Jesus out of each other?

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.

I was a tree in a story about a forest, the story of the forest is better than the story of the tree

Relationships matter. They matter as much as exercise and nutrition. And not all relationships help us reach our goals. God doesn't give us crying, pooping children because he wants to advance our careers. He gives them to us for the same reason he confused language at the Tower of Babel, to create chaos and deter us from investing too much energy in the gluttonous idols of self-absorption.

God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me specifically into the story, and He put us in specifically with the sunsets in the rainstorms as though to say, Enjoy your place in My story, the very beauty of it means it's not about you, and in time that will give you comfort.

We don't think much about how our love stories will affect the world, but they do. Children learn what's worth living for and what's worth dying for by the stories they watch us live. I want to teach our children how to get scary close, and more, how to be brave. I want to teach them that love is worth what it costs.

The stuff it takes to be intimate is authenticity, vulnerability, and a belief that other people are about as good and bad as we are.

Relationships are teleological. They're all going somewhere and they're turning us into something, hopefully something better, something new.

I want to be with people who are humble and hungry, have healthy relationships, and are working to create new and better realities in the world.