Top 380 Donald Miller Quotes (2023 Update)
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251. “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.”

— Donald Miller

252. “Perhaps that’s another reason true intimacy is so frightening. It’s the one thing we all want, and must give up control to get.”

— Donald Miller

253. “I tend to connect most easily with two kinds of people, those who are creating something and those who are easily vulnerable. Both trees grow from the same root, I think, and that’s the willingness to take risks.”

— Donald Miller

254. “I no longer believe love works like a fairy tale but like farming. Most of it is just getting up early and tilling the soil and then praying for rain. But if we do the work, we just might wake up one day to find an endless field of crops rolling into the horizon.”

— Donald Miller

255. “I kept imagining these people, just living their daily lives, and then having them suddenly ended in unjust tragedy. When we watch the news, we grieve all of this, but when we go to the movies, we want more of it. Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in. We think God is unjust, rather than a master storyteller.”

— Donald Miller

256. “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.”

— Donald Miller

257. “And once you know what it takes to live a better story, you don’t have a choice. Not living a better story would be like deciding to die, deciding to walk around numb until you die, and it’s not natural to want to die.”

— Donald Miller

258. “I began to wonder what life would be like if I dropped the act and began to trust that being myself would be enough to get the love I needed.”

— Donald Miller

259. “You are wired like you and I am wired like me. The more fully we live into ourselves, the more impact we will have. Acting may get us the applause we want, but taking a risk on being ourselves is the only path toward true intimacy. And true intimacy, the exchange of affection between two people who are not lying, is transforming.”

— Donald Miller

260. “I’ve come to believe a person’s love for you can’t grow unless you hold that person loosely.”

— Donald Miller

261. “Imagine how much a man’s life would change if he trusted that he was loved by God.”

— Donald Miller

262. “Customers are not interested in your story. They are, rather, interested in being invited into a story that has them surviving and winning in the end.”

— Donald Miller

263. “I don’t find anyone more noble than Jesus.”

— Donald Miller

264. “It’s a phone call in the morning to pray about our day, a text-message to say I’m thinking of her, a handwritten note, a postcard when I’m out of town on business, remembering what drink she likes when we’re at a bar, asking follow-up questions about her friends, and not hiding behind humor when it’s time for a serious conversation.”

— Donald Miller

265. “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

266. “Relationships unlock certain parts of who we are supposed to be.”

— Donald Miller

267. “Half the time I pick up a book, that’s what I’m trying to get.”

— Donald Miller

268. “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

269. “The entire world is falling apart because nobody will admit they are wrong.”

— Donald Miller

270. “People who live great stories know failure isn’t a judgment, it’s an education.”

— Donald Miller

271. “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

272. “I talk about love, forgiveness, social justice; I rage against American materialism in the name of altruism, but have I even controlled my own heart? The overwhelming majority of time I spend thinking about myself, pleasing myself, reassuring myself, and when I am done there is nothing to spare for the needy.”

— Donald Miller

273. “I think the devil has tricked us into thinking so much of biblical theology is story fit for kids.”

— Donald Miller

274. “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 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. I don’t believe I will ever walk away from God for intellectual reasons. Who knows anything anyway?”

— Donald Miller

275. “They are lonely. I’m not talking about lonely for a lover or a friend. I mean lonely in the universal sense, lonely inside the understanding that we are tiny people on a tiny little earth suspended in an endless void that echoes past stars and stars of stars.”

— Donald Miller

276. “I no longer believe love works like a fairy tale but like farming. Most of it is just getting up early and tilling the soil and then praying for rain. But if we do the work, we just might wake up one day to find an endless field of crops rolling into the horizon. In my opinion, that’s even better than a miracle. I’d rather earn the money than win the lottery because there’s no joy in a reward unless it comes at the end of a story.”

— Donald Miller

277. “I think a lot of the shame-based religious and political methodology has more to do with keeping people contained than with setting them free. And I’m no fan of it.”

— Donald Miller

278. “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

279. “I guess what I am saying is, I believe God wants us to create beautiful stories, and whatever it is that isn’t God wants us to create meaningless stories, teaching the people around us that life just isn’t worth living.”

— Donald Miller

280. “If I use the Bible to prove I am right, I have yet to be humbled by the beautiful truths of the Bible.”

— Donald Miller

281. “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

282. “We live on top of the created world, I think to myself, not in it.”

— Donald Miller

283. “We were meant to enjoy life, not be drowned by it.”

— Donald Miller

284. “Nancy is a great friend! We highly recommend Nancy and her team!” While those are nice words, they do very little in telling a story of transformation.”

— Donald Miller

285. “The repentance we are called to is about choosing one audience over another.”

— Donald Miller

286. “Other people keep our souls alive, just like food and water does with our body.”

— Donald Miller

287. “After all, to love somebody is to give them the power to hurt you, and nobody can hurt you if you’re the only one writing the script.”

— Donald Miller

288. “After a tragedy, I think God gives us a period of numbing as a kind of grace. Perhaps he knows our small minds, given so easily to false hope, couldn’t handle the full brunt of reality.”

— Donald Miller

289. “I thought about how there are so many lies in fear. So much deception. What else keeps us from living a better story than fear?”

— Donald Miller

290. “The harshest people I’ve met over the years have had two things in common: they don’t fully trust anybody, and they view relationships as a means to an end.”

— Donald Miller

291. “I’d learned my default mode was to perform. Even in small groups I feel like I have to be “on.” But when I’m alone my energy comes back. When I’m alone I don’t have to perform for anybody.”

— Donald Miller

292. “Just out of high school, you didn’t realize you were creating drama for the sake of drama.”

— Donald Miller

293. “God is going to reveal me as a flawed human being as fast as he can and he’s going to enjoy it because it will force me to grapple with real intimacy.”

— Donald Miller

294. “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.”

— Donald Miller

295. “You’re right,” he finally said. “You aren’t living a good story.” “That’s what I was saying.” “I see,” he said. “What do I do about that?” “You’re a writer. You know what to do.” “No, I don’t.” Jordan looked at me with his furrowed brow again. “You put something on the page,” he said. “Your life is a blank page. You write on it.”

— Donald Miller

296. “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

297. “But it’s better when you have somebody to go home to and talk about it with, somebody who is more in love with you than impressed by you.”

— Donald Miller

298. “Maybe the reason we like stories so much is because they deliver wish fulfillment. Maybe we sit in the dark and shovel sugar into our mouths because in so many stories everything is made right, and we secretly long for that ourselves.”

— Donald Miller

299. “The principle that characters do not want to change applies to more than just fiction.”

— Donald Miller

300. “I read through the book of Matthew this evening. I was up all night. I couldn’t stop reading so I read through Mark. This Jesus of yours is either a madman or the Son of God. Somewhere in the middle of Mark I realized He was the Son of God.”

— Donald Miller