A Million Miles in a Thousand Years Quotes

“I found an article online that said the screenwriters wrote about the year Odessa almost won because that year the team tried harder. They said the year the team won the story was great, but the year they lost the story was better, because the team that lost had sacrificed more. Later, when I started learning about how to resolve a story, and when I began thinking about story as a guide for life, I took a lot of comfort in that principle. It wasn’t necessary to win for the story to be great, it was only necessary to sacrifice everything.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“Without an inciting incident that disrupts their comfort, they won’t enter into a story. They have to get fired from their job or be forced to sign up for a marathon. A ring has to be purchased. A home has to be sold. The character has to jump into the story, into the discomfort and the fear, otherwise the story will never happen.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“people can’t live without a story, without a role to play.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“A character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it is the basic structure of a good story.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“Growing up in church, we were taught that Jesus was the answer to all our problems. We were taught that there was a circle-shaped hole in our heart and that we had tried to fill it with the square pegs of sex, drugs, and rock and roll; but only the circle peg of Jesus could fill our hole. I became a Christian based, in part, on this promise, but the hole never really went away. To be sure, I like Jesus, and I still follow him, but the idea that Jesus will make everything better is a lie. It's basically biblical theology translated into the language of infomercials. The truth is, the apostles never really promise Jesus is going to make everything better here on earth. Can you imagine an informercial with Paul, testifying to the amazing product of Jesus, saying that he once had power and authority, and since he tried Jesus he's been moved from prison to prison, beaten, and routinely bitten by snakes? I don't think many people would be buying that product. [...] It's hard to imagine how a religion steeped in so much pain and sacrifice turned into a promise for earthly euphoria.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“If you think about it, an enormous amount of damage is created by the myth of utopia. There is an intrinsic feeling in nearly every person that your life could be perfect if you only had such-and-such a car of such-and-such a spouse or such-and-such a job. We believe we will be made whole by our accomplishments, our possessions, or our social status. It's written in the fabric of our DNA that life used to be beautiful and now it isn't, and if only this and if only that, it would be beautiful again.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“Life no longer felt meaningless. It felt stressful and terrifying, but it definitely didn't feel meaningless.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“A character is what he does.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“Jason decided to stop yelling at his daughter and, instead, created a better story to invite her into.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“Pain then, if one could have faith in something greater than himself, might be a path to experiencing a meaning beyond the false gratification of personal comfort.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“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, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“joy costs pain.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“The point of a story is never about the ending, remember. It’s about your character getting”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“The principle that characters do not want to change applies to more than just fiction.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“Victor Frankl whispered in my ear all the same. He said to me I was a tree in a story about a forest, and that it was arrogant of me to believe any differently. And he told me the story of the forest is better than the story of the tree.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“there is a force in the world that doesn’t want us to live good stories. It doesn’t want us to face our issues, to face our fear and bring something beautiful into the world. 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, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“resistance, a kind of feeling that comes against you when you point toward a distant horizon, is a sure sign that you are supposed to do the thing in the first place. The harder the resistance, the more important the task must be,”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“humans are alive for the purpose of journey,”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“I was watching the news the other night, and they were still covering that story in Mumbai about the terrorists who went on a shooting rampage. The man on the news said that before the terrorists killed the Jews in the Jewish center, they tortured them. I had to turn off the television, because I could see the torture in my head the way they were describing it. 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. If you want to talk about positive and negative charges in a story, ultimately I think you’d break those charges down into life and death. The fact of life and the reality of death give the human story its dramatic tension. For whatever reason, we don’t celebrate coming into life much. I mean we send cards and women have baby showers and all that, but because the baby can’t really say thank you, we don’t make a big deal out of it. We make a big deal out of death, though. We sit around at funerals, feeling sorry for the unfortunate person whom death happened to. We say nice things about the person; we dig a hole and put the body in the hole and cover the casket with all our questions. I heard that a lot of playwrights used to end their stories with a funeral if it was a tragedy and a wedding if it was a comedy. I think that’s why we make such a big deal out of weddings, because a wedding means life, and because the bride and groom are old enough to write a thank-you note for the serving spoons you gave them. And perhaps because you get to drink and dance, no matter how old you are. I only dance at weddings. I practically only drink at weddings, too, mostly because that’s where I do my dancing. One of the things that gives me hope is that, even with all the tragedy that happens in the world, the Bible says that when we get to heaven, there will be a wedding and there will be drinking and there will be dancing.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“… fear isn’t only a guide to keep us safe; it’s also a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life. — Donald Miller, A Million Miles In a Thousand Years (‎ Thomas Nelson Inc; 33265th edition, January 1, 2009)”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“I cried out to him an angry petition for rescue. I doubted him and needed him at the same time.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“when something hard happens to you, you have two choices in how to deal with it. You can either get bitter, or better.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“You put your characters through hell. You put them through hell. That’s the only way we change.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“I think this is when most people give up on their stories. They come out of college wanting to change the world, wanting to get married, wanting to have kids and change the way people buy office supplies. But they get into the middle and discover it was harder than they thought. They can’t see the distant shore anymore, and they wonder if their paddling is moving them forward. None of the trees behind them are getting smaller and none of the trees ahead are getting bigger. They take it out on their spouses, and they go looking for an easier story.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“But indeed, a home had been built.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“You become like the people you interact with. And if your friends are living boring stories, you probably will too.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“The thing about writing a story, in real life and on paper, is half the effort is just figuring out what the story is going to be.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“There needs to be a question as to whether the character will make it, whether he will defeat the enemy or the enemy will defeat him.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“I found myself wanting even better stories. And that’s the thing you’ll realize when you organize your life into the structure of story. You’ll get a taste for one story and then want another, and then another, and the stories will build until you’re living a kind of epic of risk and reward, and the whole thing will be molding you into the actual character whose roles you’ve been playing.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“The ambitions we have will become the stories we live.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life