"There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. (They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.) And as I lay there, it occurred to me that God is up there somewhere. Of course, I had always known He was, but this time I felt it, I realized it, the way a person realizes they are hungry or thirsty. The knowledge of God seeped out of my brain and into my heart. I imagined Him looking down on this earth, half angry because His beloved mankind had cheated on Him, had committed adultery, and yet hopelessly in love with her, drunk with love for her."
— Donald Miller

"It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll. This is how God does things"
— Donald Miller

""Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.""
— Donald Miller (Through Painted Deserts)

"Moral #1: "If you work hard, stay focused, and never give up, you will eventually get what you want in life."

Moral #2: Sometimes the things we want most in life are the things that will kill us. "
— Donald Miller

"And if these mountains had eyes, they would wake to find two strangers in their fences, standing in admiration as a breathing red pours its tinge upon earth's shore. These mountains, which have seen untold sunrises, long to thunder praise but stand reverent, silent so that man's weak praise should be given God's attention."
— Donald Miller (Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road)

"Believing in God is as much like falling in love as it is making a decision. Love is both something that happens to you and something you decide upon."
— Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality)

""No, life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath... We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?" -Donald Miller,Through Painted Deserts"
— Donald Miller

"Imagine, a Being with a mind as great as God's, with feet like trees and a voice like rushing wind, telling you that you are His cherished creation."
— Donald Miller

""I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made fo figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.""
— Donald Miller (Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road)

" I will give you this, my love, and I will not bargain or barter any longer. I will love you, as sure as He has loved me. I will discover what I can discover and though you remain a mystery, save God's own knowledge, what I disclose of you I will keep in the warmest chamber of my heart, the very chamber where God has stowed Himself in me. And I will do this to my death, and to death it may bring me.
I will love you like God, because of God, mighted by the power of God. I will stop expecting your love, demanding you love, trading for your love, gaming for your love. I will simply love. I am giving myself to you, and tomorrow I will do it again. I suppose the clock itself will wear thin its time before I am ended at this altar of dying and dying again.
God risked Himself on me. I will risk myself on you. And together, we will learn to love, and perhaps then, and only then, understand this gravity that drew Him, unto us."
— Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality)

"I once listened to an Indian on television say that God was in the wind and the water, and I wondered at how beautiful that was because it meant you could swim in Him or have Him brush your face in a breeze."
— Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality)

""I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing.""
— Donald Miller (Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road)

"I'll tell you how the sun rose
A ribbon at a time...

It's a living book, this life; it folds out in a million settings, cast with a billion beautiful characters, and it is almost over for you. It doesn't matter how old you are; it is coming to a close quickly, and soon the credits will roll and all your friends will fold out of your funeral and drive back to their homes in cold and still and silence. And they will make a fire and pour some wine and think about how you once were . . . and feel a kind of sickness at the idea you never again will be.

So soon you will be in that part of the book where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand, and only a thin wisp of the story in your right. You will know by the page count, not by the narrative, that the Author is wrapping things up. You begin to mourn its ending, and want to pace yourself slowly toward its closure, knowing the last lines will speak of something beautiful, of the end of something long and earned, and you hope the thing closes out like last breaths, like whispers about how much and who the characters have come to love, and how authentic the sentiments feel when they have earned a hundred pages of qualification.

And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?"
— Donald Miller (Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road)

"Even our beliefs have become trend statements. We don’t even believe things because we believe them anymore. We only believe things because they are cool things to believe."
— Donald Miller

"I can't do it. It would be like, say, trying to fall in love with somebody, or trying to convince yourself that your favorite food is pancakes. You don't decide those things, they just happen to you. If God is real, He needs to happen to me."
— Donald Miller

"I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.

After that I liked jazz music.

Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.

I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened."
— Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality)

"I read once that the ancient Egyptians had fifty words for sand & the Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. I wish I had a thousand words for love, but all that comes to mind is the way you move against me while you sleep & there are no words for that."
— Brian Andreas (Story People)

"You're the strangest person I ever met, she said & I said you too & we decided we'd know each other a long time. "
— Brian Andreas

"Anyone can slay a dragon ...but try waking up every morning and loving the world all over again. That's what takes a real hero.

"
— Brian Andreas

"She said she usually cried at least once each day not because she was sad, but because the world was so beautiful & life was so short."
— Brian Andreas

"I saw them standing there pretending to be just friends, when all the time in the world could not pry them apart. "
— Brian Andreas

"Time stands still best in moments that look suspiciously like ordinary life."
— Brian Andreas

"I wish you could have been there for the sun & the rain & the long, hard hills. For the sound of a thousand conversations scattered along the road. For the people laughing & crying & remembering at the end. But, mainly, I wish you could have been there."
— Brian Andreas

""You may not remember the time you let me go first.
Or the time you dropped back to tell me it wasn't that far to go.
Or the time you waited at the crossroads for me to catch up.
You may not remember any of those, but I do and this is what I have to say to you:

Today, no matter what it takes,
we ride home together." "
— Brian Andreas (Traveling Light: Stories & Drawings for a Quiet Mind)

"If you hold on to the handle, she said, it's easier to maintain the illusion of control. But it's more fun if you just let the wind carry you.
"
— Brian Andreas

"I was waiting for the longest time, she said. I thought you forgot.

It is hard to forget, I said, when there is such an empty space when you are gone."
— Brian Andreas (Story People)

"They came to sit & dangle their feet off the edge of the world & after awhile they forgot everything but the good & true things they would do someday. "
— Brian Andreas

"I have too much to lose, she said, if I cross that line. Like what? I said. She could not think of anything that day so she said she'd get back to me. Since then I've been thinking what I would lose if I cross my line & I haven't come up with anything either. There's always another line somewhere.

"
— Brian Andreas

"In the end, I think that I will like that we were sitting on the bed, talking & wondering where the time had gone."
— Brian Andreas

"Most people don't know there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don't get too comfortable & fall asleep & miss your life. "
— Brian Andreas

"In my dream, the angel shrugged and said, if we fail this time, it will be a failure of imagination

and then she placed the world gently in the palm of my hand."
— Brian Andreas

"The clock is a conspiracy & a crime against humanity
and I would not own one
except I miss appointments without it."
— Brian Andreas (Story People)

"if there is any secret to this life i live, this is it: the sound of what cannot be seen sings within everything that can. and there is nothing more to it than that."
— Brian Andreas

"A few said they'd be horses. Most said they'd be some sort of cat. My friend said she'd like to come back as a porcupine. I don't like crowds, she said. "
— Brian Andreas

"There was a single blue line of crayon drawn across every wall in the house. What does it mean? I asked. A pirate needs the sight of the sea, he said and then he pulled his eye patch down and turned and sailed away."
— Brian Andreas (Story People)

"I didn't listen to her because she was my mother & wouldn't know anything until I was much older."
— Brian Andreas

"time stands still best in moments that look suspiciously like ordinary life. "
— Brian Andreas

"I once had a garden filled with flowers that grew only on dark thoughts but they need constant attention & one day I decided I had better things to do. "
— Brian Andreas

"I held her close for only a short time, but after she was gone, I'd see her smile on the face of a perfect stranger and I knew she would be there with me all the rest of my days."
— Brian Andreas (Strange Dreams - Collected Stories & Drawings)

"Don't you hear it? She asked & I shook my head no & then she started to dance & suddenly there was music everywhere & it went on for a very long time & when I finally found words all I could say was thank you. "
— Brian Andreas (Story People)

"feels like some kind of ride but it's turning out just
to be life going absolutely perfectly"
— Brian Andreas

"We sat in the car
& the night dropped
down until the
only sounds were
the crickets &
the dance of our voices

& for a moment
the world became
small enough to
roll back & forth
between us."
— Brian Andreas (Hearing Voices - Collected Stories & Drawings)

"In those days, we finally chose to walk like giants and hold the world in arms grown strong with love
And there may be many things we forget in the days to come,

But this will not be one of them."
— Brian Andreas (Traveling Light: Stories & Drawings for a Quiet Mind)

"This is a giant block of whatever is most difficult for you to carry & trust me on this, you'll carry it more times than you can count until you decide that's exactly what you want to do most & then it won't weigh a thing anymore
"
— Brian Andreas

"Every day he stood in front of the Bank of America. You're trapped in the belly of a big pink pig, he said. We ignored him. We had work to do."
— Brian Andreas (Story People)

"I'm not sure if there's one right place I'm supposed to be, he said, but I know a couple of wrong places I'd give a second try in a heartbeat. "
— Brian Andreas

"That was the day the ancient songs of blood and war spilled from a hole in the sky
And there was a long moment as we listened and fell silent in our grief
and then one by one,
we stood tall
and came together
and began to sing of life and love and all that is good and true
And I will never forget that day when the ancient songs died because there was no one in the world to sing them."
— Brian Andreas (Traveling Light: Stories & Drawings for a Quiet Mind)

"Trapped mainly by wanting things to be exactly as they are, only better "
— Brian Andreas

"He loved her for almost everything she was & she decided that was enough to let him stay for a very long time. "
— Brian Andreas

"Your job is to focus on my personal happiness, she said, & I've got big plans, so break time is over. "
— Brian Andreas