Top 180 Shauna Niequist Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Now I know that the best thing I can offer to this world is not my force or energy, but a well-tended spirit, a wise and brave soul.”

— Shauna Niequist

52. “Food matters because it’s one of the things that forces us to live in this world – this tactile, physical, messy, and beautiful world – no matter how hard we try to escape into our minds and our ideals. Food is a reminder of our humanity, our fragility, our createdness.”

— Shauna Niequist

53. “The snow is only meant, created, commanded to fall. The rain is only meant, created, commanded to pour down. You were only meant, created, commanded to be who you are, weird and wonderful, imperfect and messy and lovely. What.”

— Shauna Niequist

54. “Food and cooking are among the richest subjects in the world. Every day of our lives, they preoccupy, delight, and refresh us. Food is not just some fuel we need to get us going toward higher things. Cooking is not a drudgery we put up with in order to get the fuel delivered. Rather, each is a heart’s astonishment. Both stop us dead in our tracks with wonder. Even more, they sit us down evening after evening, and in the company that forms around.”

— Shauna Niequist

55. “In my experience, you can never go wrong with flowers and food, even when someone insists that there’s nothing at all you can do.”

— Shauna Niequist

56. “I wanted, of course, for this bittersweet season to be over. I felt so strongly that when I finished the book, I’d be free to move into another season, one of life and celebration. But this is what I know now: they’re the same thing, and that’s all there is.”

— Shauna Niequist

57. “Love, though, doesn’t allow hiding. Love invites whole selves and whole stories out into the light. Friendship sees into us, into our secrets, into our elaborate games and excuses. Friendship carries all this mess together, so that you don’t have to hide, so that you carry it together. What a miracle!”

— Shauna Niequist

58. “Part of the magic of the lake is that it isn’t home – it’s away, and away allows us to see the rhythms and dimensions of our lives more clearly. So it doesn’t necessarily work for us to live here at the lake, but I do want the way of living that I’ve tasted here to inform and ground how I live everywhere, all year long. The lake gives me something to aspire to – a reminder, a rhythm, a pattern. Simple, connected to God and His world and people, uncomplicated by lots of stuff.”

— Shauna Niequist

59. “When you do what you love with people who love the same thing, something is born into your midst and begins to connect you. When you walk with someone, listen to their story, carry their burden, play with their kids, that’s community. When you find yourself learning from them and inviting them into the family places in your life, that’s community, and wherever you find it, it’s always a gift.”

— Shauna Niequist

60. “But entertaining isn’t a sport or a competition. It’s an act of love, if you let it be. You can twist it and turn it into anything you want – a way to show off your house, a way to compete with your friends, a way to earn love and approval. Or you can decide that every time you open your door, it’s an act of love, not performance or competition or striving. You can decide that every time people gather around your table, your goal is nourishment, not neurotic proving. You can decide.”

— Shauna Niequist

61. “OPPORTUNITIES TO build friendship and community don’t always come at the most convenient times, but we have to grab them when we get the chance.”

— Shauna Niequist

62. “Life is painful, and we carry with us so much disappointment and heartbreak. But I’m fighting to save some space inside me where I can create hope.”

— Shauna Niequist

63. “It’s sloppy theology to think that all suffering is good for us, or that it’s a result of sin. All suffering can be used for good, over time, after mourning and healing, by God’s graciousness. But sometimes it’s just plain loss, not because you needed to grow, not because life or God or anything is teaching you any kind of lesson. The trick is knowing the difference between the two.”

— Shauna Niequist

64. “But it isn’t about perfection, and it isn’t about performance. You’ll miss the richest moments in life – the sacred moments when we feel God’s grace and presence through the actual faces and hands of the people we love – if you’re too scared or too ashamed to open the door.”

— Shauna Niequist

65. “Try to keep your soul always in peace and quiet, always ready for whatever our Lord may wish to work in you. It is certainly a higher virtue of the soul, and a greater grace, to be able to enjoy the Lord in different times and different places than in only one. – Ignatius of Loyola.”

— Shauna Niequist

66. “I want to celebrate in the face of despair, dance when all we see on the horizon is doom.”

— Shauna Niequist

67. “In a thousand ways, you live by the sword and you die by the sword. When you allow other people to determine your best choices; when you allow yourself to be carried along by what other people think your life should be, could be, must be; when you hand them the pen and tell them to write your story, you don’t get the pen back. Not easily anyway. I.”

— Shauna Niequist

68. “And most important, I’ll choose to believe that sometimes the happiest ending isn’t the one you keep longing for, but something you absolutely cannot see from where you are.”

— Shauna Niequist

69. “Good friendships are like breakfast. You think you’re too busy to eat breakfast, but then you find yourself exhausted and cranky halfway through the day, and discover that your attempt to save time totally backfired.”

— Shauna Niequist

70. “Brave doesn’t always involve grand gestures, sometimes brave looks like staying when you want to leave, telling the truth when all you want to do is change the subject... sometimes brave looks like boring, and thats totally, absolutely, okay.”

— Shauna Niequist

71. “You can use whatever term you want: besetting sin, shadow side, strength and weakness. The very thing that makes you you, that makes you great, that makes you different from everyone else is also the thing that, unchecked, will ruin you. For me, it’s lust for life. It’s energy, curiosity, hunger.”

— Shauna Niequist

72. “I’m not talking about cooking as performance, or entertaining as a complicated choreography of competition and showing off. I’m talking about feeding someone with honesty and intimacy and love, about making your home a place where people are fiercely protected, even if just for a few hours, from the crush and cruelty of the day.”

— Shauna Niequist

73. “Some of being an adult, though, is about protecting and preserving what we discover to be the best parts of ourselves, and here’s a hint: they’re almost always the parts we’ve struggled against for years. They make us weird or different, unusual but not in a good way. They’re our child-sides, our innate selves, not the most productive or competitive or logical, just true.”

— Shauna Niequist

74. “Your pain doesn’t define you. Your failures don’t define you. Your createdness defines you. Christ in his goodness defines you”.”

— Shauna Niequist

75. “The natural world is so breathtakingly beautiful. People are so weird and awesome and loving and life-giving. Why, then, did I try so hard for so long to get away without feeling or living deeply?”

— Shauna Niequist

76. “Frankly, the men I know don’t generally struggle with this. They’ve been raised to eat when they’re hungry, sleep when they’re tired, run when they’re antsy, leave when they’re ready to leave. But even the most driven, articulate, strong women I know struggle to really meet their own needs.”

— Shauna Niequist

77. “A story is never about one person. It has a full cast of characters, connected by blood or love or jealousy. There’s nothing small or inconsequential about our stories. There is, in fact, nothing bigger. And when we tell the truth about our lives – the broken parts, the secret parts, the beautiful parts – then the gospel comes to life, an actual story about redemption, instead of abstraction and theory.”

— Shauna Niequist

78. “Life hands us opportunities at every turn to get over ourselves, to get outside ourselves, to wake up from our own bad dreams and realize that really lovely things are happening all the time.”

— Shauna Niequist

79. “People called me tough. And capable. And they said I was someone they could count on. Those are all nice things. Kind of. But they’re not the same as loving, or kind, or joyful. I was not those things. I.”

— Shauna Niequist

80. “Pride, for years, has told me that I am strong enough to drink from a firehose, and gluttony tells me it will all be so delicious. But those voices are liars. The glass of cool water is more lovely and sustaining than the firehose will ever be, and I’m starting to trust the voices of peace and simplicity more than pride and gluttony. They’re leading me well these days.”

— Shauna Niequist

81. “Celebration when your plan is working? Anyone can do that. But when you realize that the story of your life could be told a thousand different ways, that you could tell it over and over as a tragedy, but you choose to call it an epic, that’s when you start to learn what celebration is. When what you see in front of you is so far outside of what you dreamed, but you have the belief, the boldness, the courage to call it beautiful instead of calling it wrong, that’s celebration.”

— Shauna Niequist

82. “Use what you have, use what the world gives you. Use the first day of fall: bright flame before winter’s deadness; harvest; orange, gold, amber; cool nights and the smell of fire. Our tree-lined streets are set ablaze, our kitchens filled with the smells of nostalgia: apples bubbling into sauce, roasting squash, cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, warmth itself. The leaves as they spark into wild color just before they die are the world’s oldest performance art, and everything we see is celebrating one last violently hued hurrah before the black and white silence of winter.”

— Shauna Niequist

83. “This is actually my life, and it doesn’t matter a bit if it would be lovely for someone else to live. What does matter: does it feel congruent with how God made me and called me?”

— Shauna Niequist

84. “Share your life with the people you love, even if it means saving up for a ticket and going without a few things for a while to make it work. There are enough long lonely days of the same old thing, and if you let enough years pass, and if you let the routine steamroll your life, you’ll wake up one day, isolated and weary, and wonder what happened to all those old friends. You’ll wonder why all you share is Christmas cards, and why life feels lonely and bone-dry.”

— Shauna Niequist

85. “It’s easy to be liked by strangers. It’s very hard to be loved and connected to the people in your home when you’re always bringing them your most exhausted self and resenting the fact that the scraps you’re giving them aren’t cutting it.”

— Shauna Niequist

86. “I fake-rested instead of real-rested, and then I found that I was real-tired. It feels ludicrous to be a grown woman, a mother, still learning how to rest. But here I am, baby-stepping to learn something kids know intuitively. Part of being an adult is taking responsibility for resting your body and your soul. And part of being an adult is learning to meet your own needs, because when it comes down to it, with a few exceptions, no one else is going to do it for you.”

— Shauna Niequist

87. “But you can’t have yes without no. Another way to say it: if you’re not careful with your yeses, you start to say no to some very important things without even realizing it. In my rampant yes-yes-yes-ing, I said no, without intending to, to rest, to peace, to groundedness, to listening, to deep and slow connection, built over years instead of moments. All.”

— Shauna Niequist

88. “Anyone who knew you as an adolescent and still wants to spend time with you is a true friend, and.”

— Shauna Niequist

89. “Maybe it is God calling a big cosmic time out on me; giving me a chance at a new way of living. This is what I know. I have always been a more is more person and something shifted in me this summer. Something inside me said, “No more!” No more pushing and rushing. No more cold pizza at midnight. No more flights. No more books. No more house-guests. No more all of these things. Even things I love. Things I long for. Things that make me happy. No More. Only less. Less of everything.”

— Shauna Niequist

90. “It is better to be loved than admired. It is better to be truly known and seen and taken care of by a small tribe than adored by strangers who think they know you in a meaningful way.”

— Shauna Niequist

91. “When you travel, and when you read, you are not actually alone, but rather surrounded by other worlds entirely, the footsteps and phrases of whole other lives keeping you company as you go.”

— Shauna Niequist

92. “How we live matters, and what you choose to own will shape your life, whether you choose to admit it or not. Let’s live lightly, freely, courageously, surrounded only by what brings joy, simplicity, and beauty.”

— Shauna Niequist

93. “In my rampant yes-yes-yes-ing, I said no, without intending to, to rest, to peace, to groundedness, to listening, to deep and slow connection, built over years instead of moments.”

— Shauna Niequist

94. “Stop. Right now. Remake your life from the inside out.”

— Shauna Niequist

95. “That’s why travel is so important, among other reasons: to get far enough away from our everyday lives to see those lives with new clarity. When you’re literally on the other side of the world, when you’re under the silent sea, watching a bright, silent world of fish and coral, when you’re staring up at a sky so bright and dense with stars it makes you gasp, it’s in those moments that you begin to see the fullness of your life, the possibility that still prevails, that always prevails.”

— Shauna Niequist

96. “Many cooks and food writers have nothing but negative things to say about people who have dietary restrictions or preferences. Quite often it’s suggested that you just make what you want to make, and everyone can find something to eat, most likely. But if feeding people around your table is about connecting with them more than it is about showing off your menu or skills, isn’t it important to cook in such a way that their preferences or restrictions are honored?”

— Shauna Niequist

97. “There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming.”

— Shauna Niequist

98. “What would our lives be like if our days were studded by tiny, completely unproductive, silly, nonstrategic, wild and beautiful five-minute breaks, reminders that our days are for loving and learning and laughing, not for pushing and planning, reminders that it’s all about the heart, not the hustle?”

— Shauna Niequist

99. “Go back to being loved; go back to your purpose. This thing I am being asked to do will not get me more love. And this will not help me meet my purpose. Some.”

— Shauna Niequist

100. “My regrets: how many years I bruised people with my fragmented, anxious presence. How many moments of connection I missed – too busy, too tired, too frantic and strung out on the drug of efficiency.”

— Shauna Niequist