Top 380 Donald Miller Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “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

352. “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

353. “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

354. “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

355. “But love doesn’t control, and I suppose that’s why it’s the ultimate risk. In the end, we have to hope the person we’re giving our heart to won’t break it, and be willing to forgive them when they do, even as they will forgive us. Real love stories don’t have dictators, they have participants. Love is an ever-changing, complicated, choose-your-own adventure narrative that offers the world but guarantees nothing.”

— Donald Miller

356. “But true intimacy is just like that: it’s the food you grow from well-tilled ground. And like most things good for us, it’s an acquired taste.”

— Donald Miller

357. “Jason decided to stop yelling at his daughter and, instead, created a better story to invite her into.”

— Donald Miller

358. “He said, “Don, when something hard happens to you, you have two choices in how to deal with it. You can either get bitter, or better. I chose to get better. It’s made all the difference.”

— Donald Miller

359. “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.”

— Donald Miller

360. “I only say this because a positive evolution happened in my life when I realized healthy relationships happen best between healthy people.”

— Donald Miller

361. “There’s truth in the idea we’re never going to be perfect in love but we can get close. And the closer we get, the healthier we will be. Love is not a game any of us can win, it’s just a story we can live and enjoy.”

— Donald Miller

362. “All relationships are teleological, are going somewhere.”

— Donald Miller

363. “I knew then, this relationship would have to be different. I knew I’d have to know myself and be known. These weren’t only terrifying prospects, they were foreign. I didn’t know how to do either. And the stakes were high. I was going to have to either learn to be healthy or I’d spend the rest of my life pretending. It was either intimacy or public isolation.”

— Donald Miller

364. “I wonder if what might help couples build great families is to pick a place for their family to go and then hit the gas, to work toward their vision and build it out.”

— Donald Miller

365. “One of the best ways we can illustrate how we help our customers transform is through customer testimonials.”

— Donald Miller

366. “This message God was communicating to mankind, this Gospel of Jesus, was a message to the heart as much as to the head, that the methodology was as important as the message itself, that the message could not be presented accurately outside of the emotions within which these truths were embedded.”

— Donald Miller

367. “But love doesn’t control, and I suppose that’s why it’s the ultimate risk.”

— Donald Miller

368. “I realized that for years I’d thought of love as something that would complete me, make all my troubles go away. I worshipped at the altar of romantic completion. And it had cost me, plenty of times. ANd it had cost me most of the girls I’d dated, too, because I wanted them to be something they weren’t. It’s too much pressure to put on a person.”

— Donald Miller

369. “Your problem is not that God is not fulfilling, your problem is that you are spoiled.”

— Donald Miller

370. “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.”

— Donald Miller

371. “There is no conflict man can endure that will not produce a blessing. And I smiled. I’m not saying I was happy, but for some reason I smiled. It hurts now, but I’ll love this memory, I thought to myself. And I do.”

— Donald Miller

372. “The downside of being a writer is you get plenty of time to overthink your life.”

— Donald Miller

373. “When a person has no other persons he invents them because he was not designed to be alone, because it isn’t good for a person to be alone.”

— Donald Miller

374. “In business, if we don’t communicate clearly, we shrink.”

— Donald Miller

375. “He said before they had the twins he thought of himself as a provider and protector, as somebody who was responsible to protect the physical world around the people he loved. But after having kids he realized that was 10 percent of the battle. What he really had to protect was the twins’ identity. He said there was a primal thing in him that wanted to stand between his children and the world and fight back all the lies.”

— Donald Miller

376. “I don’t have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad, I only have to look at myself.”

— Donald Miller

377. “What good does it do to tell somebody to live morally so they can die 50 years later and apparently go to Hell?”

— Donald Miller

378. “I am willing to sound dumb. I am willing to be wrong. I am willing to be passionate about something that isn’t perceived as cool.”

— Donald Miller

379. “You’d think God would come right out and tell us what to do in the Bible, but He doesn’t. He mostly tells stories, and He rarely stops the story to say what the point is. He just lets the characters and conflict hang in the air like smoke.”

— Donald Miller

380. “It’s one thing to impress people, but it’s another to love them.”

— Donald Miller

381. “I didn’t want to need his affirmation. But part of our selves is spirit, and our spirits are thirsty, and my father’s words went into my spirit like water.”

— Donald Miller

382. “It’s encouraging to watch what people will do to contribute to a love story. It’s as though we universally recognize the union of souls is worth sacrificing for.”

— Donald Miller

383. “What’s the most important thing you can do today? If you can answer that question, morning after morning, you are in an elite group of professionals.”

— Donald Miller

384. “At the curiosity stage we are really only making two large piles: keep and discard.”

— Donald Miller

385. “Alfred Hitchcock defined a good story as “life with the dull parts taken out.”

— Donald Miller

386. “A general rule in creating stories is that characters don’t want to change. They must be forced to change.”

— Donald Miller

387. “A character is what he does.”

— Donald Miller

388. “I wanted it to be an easy story. But nobody really remembers easy stories. Characters have to face their greatest fears with courage. That’s what makes a story good. If you think about the stories you like most, they probably have lots of conflict. There is probably death at stake, inner death or actual death, you know. These polar charges, these happy and sad things in life, are like colors God uses to draw the world.”

— Donald Miller

389. “I believe there is a writer outside ourselves, plotting a better story for us, interacting with us, even, and whispering a better story into our consciousness.”

— Donald Miller

390. “She only knows what he says and what he does, not what he thinks and what he feels.”

— Donald Miller

391. “I know what life is about, but what if I don’t like it?”

— Donald Miller