Top 380 Donald Miller Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “I made a single decision early on. I decided I wouldn’t judge my kids. No matter what they told me, I wouldn’t judge them. I might have to discipline them, but I wouldn’t make them feel like lesser people for their mistakes. And because of that, they learned to trust me with their deepest thoughts... We taught them the basics early. But the older they got, the more I listened without judgment as they figured out how to apply wisdom in their own lives. And they’ve turned out well.”

— Donald Miller

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

— Donald Miller

303. “The whole experience makes me wonder if the time we spend trying to become somebody people will love isn’t wasted because the most powerful, most attractive person we can be is who we already are, an ever-changing being that is becoming and will never arrive, but has opinions about what is seen along the journey.”

— Donald Miller

304. “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

305. “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

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

— Donald Miller

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

— Donald Miller

308. “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.”

— Donald Miller

309. “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

310. “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

311. “Just because a tagline sounds great or a picture on a website grabs the eye, that doesn’t mean it helps us enter into our customers’ story. In every line of copy we write, we’re either serving the customer’s story or descending into confusion; we’re either making music or making noise.”

— Donald Miller

312. “How can we be loved if we are always in hiding?”

— Donald Miller

313. “My friend looked at me confused. He laughed a little, then sighed, then teared up. “It’s true you’re bad at relationships,” I said, “but it’s also true you are good at them. They’re both true, old friend.” I reminded him of all the people who love him and all the people he’s loved. I told him I thought it was unfair for a man to be judged by a moment, by a season. We are all more complicated than that.”

— Donald Miller

314. “There are no specific results mentioned or details about what life is like now that the transformation has taken place. If you’re asking customers to write a.”

— Donald Miller

315. “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

316. “When I walked into the Christian section of a bookstore, the message was clear: Faith is something you do alone. Rick does not have much tolerance for people living alone. He’s like Bill Clinton in that he feels everyone’s pain. If Rick thinks somebody is lonely, he can’t sleep at night. He wants us all to live with each other and play nice so he can get some rest. Tortured soul.”

— Donald Miller

317. “I was talking to a homeless man at the laundry mat recently, and he said that when we reduce Christian spirituality to math we defile the Holy. I thought that was very beautiful and comforting because I have never been good at math.”

— Donald Miller

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

— Donald Miller

319. “At the end of the day, when I am lying in bed and I know the chances of any of our theology being exactly right are a million to one, I need to know that God has things figured out, that if my math is wrong we are still going to be okay. And wonder is that feeling we get when we let go of our silly answers, our mapped out rules that we want God to follow. I don’t think there is any better worship than wonder.”

— Donald Miller

320. “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.”

— Donald Miller

321. “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

322. “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

323. “The great tragedy of our lives seems to be that we are smart enough to ask the questions of meaning but too dumb to really figure it out.”

— Donald Miller

324. “I have friends who are writers, but we don’t tend to talk about literature very much. It’s just not part of my process; I tend to be pretty secretive about what I’m working on.”

— Donald Miller

325. “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

326. “What attracts us doesn’t always connect us. I can’t tell you how many friends I have who have been taken in by somebody sexy or powerful or charming but soon after find themselves feeling alone in the relationship. It’s one thing to impress people, but it’s another to love them.”

— Donald Miller

327. “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

328. “And that’s the first time I realized that the idea a character is what he does makes as much sense in life as it does in the movies. I thought about my friend’s story from his wife’s perspective. She only knows what he says and what he does, not what he thinks and what he feels. I’m sure his wife picked up on his newfound enthusiasm, but it did help me realize the stories we tell ourselves are very different from the stories we tell the world.”

— Donald Miller

329. “Even our beliefs have become trend statements.”

— Donald Miller

330. “Those who can’t accept their imperfections can’t accept grace either.”

— Donald Miller

331. “Sometimes when I watch my dog, I think about how good life can be, if we only lose ourselves in our stories. Lucy doesn’t read self-help books about how to be a dog; she just IS a dog. All she wants to do is chase ducks and sticks and do other things that make both her and me happy. It makes me wonder if that was the intention for man, to chase sticks and ducks, to name animals, to create families, and to keep looking back at God to feed off his pleasure at our pleasure.”

— Donald Miller

332. “I don’t know if there’s a healthier way for two people to stay in love than to stop using each other to resolve their unfulfilled longings and, instead, start holding each other closely as they experience them.”

— Donald Miller

333. “What goes on in the other person’s soul is none of your business. All you’re responsible for is your soul, nobody else’s.”

— Donald Miller

334. “It’s true our lives can pass small and unnoticed by the masses, and we are no less dignified for having lived quietly. In fact, I’ve come to believe there’s something noble about doing little with your life save offering love to a person who is offering it back.”

— Donald Miller

335. “You never question the truth of something until you have to explain it to a skeptic.”

— Donald Miller

336. “She said I didn’t have to perform for her. She didn’t have to say that. I knew it was true. Who else do you marry but the person who pulls you off the stage?”

— Donald Miller

337. “It comforts me to think that if we are created beings the thing that created us would have to be greater than us, so much greater, in fact, that we would not be able to understand it. It would have to be greater than the facts of our reality and so it would seem to us, looking out from within our reality that it would contradict reason. But reason itself would suggest it would have to be greater than reality or it would not be reasonable.”

— Donald Miller

338. “How many relationships have been ruined by two people attempting to squeeze the Jesus out of each other?”

— Donald Miller

339. “The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest.”

— Donald Miller

340. “Unless we’re honest with each other, we can’t connect. We can’t be intimate.”

— Donald Miller

341. “I love writing books – I really do. If I could just quit everything and work on a book every day, I would love that most.”

— Donald Miller

342. “The risk of being known is also the decision to be criticized by some.”

— Donald Miller

343. “Anybody who wants to get their way says that Jesus supports their view. But that isn’t Jesus’ fault.”

— Donald Miller

344. “It is a pretty good idea to make some noises when you are at a play.”

— Donald Miller

345. “I began to wonder if what we were doing it evangelical circles had more to do with redeeming ourselves to culture than it did with showing Jesus to a hurting world, a world literally filled with outcasts.”

— Donald Miller

346. “I kept asking Him to say it again, but He wouldn’t. I guess it’s because I heard Him the first time, you know.”

— Donald Miller

347. “Of all the principles I’d learn about story, the idea that a character is what he does remains the hardest to actually live.”

— Donald Miller

348. “I have a pastor friend who says the root of sin is the desire for control. I think there’s some truth to that. And I’d add the root of control is fear.”

— Donald Miller

349. “Sometimes the real bonding happens in conversations about nothing, Don,” she said. “Sometimes being willing to talk about nothing shows how much we want to be with each other. And that’s a powerful thing.”

— Donald Miller

350. “Sometimes our identities get distorted because people lie about us and scare us, and sometimes our identities get distorted because of things we’ve actually done. The result is the same, though. Isolation.”

— Donald Miller