Scary Close Quotes

“If honesty is the key to intimacy, it means we don’t have to be perfect and, moreover, we don’t have to pretend to be perfect.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“those of us who are never satisfied with our accomplishments secretly believe nobody will love us unless we’re perfect.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“I’d have to trust that my flaws were the ways through which I would receive grace. We don’t think of our flaws as the glue that binds us to the people we love, but they are. Grace only sticks to our imperfections. Those who can’t accept their imperfections can’t accept grace either.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“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, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“90 percent of people's problems could be prevented if they'd choose healthier people to give their hearts to.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

“It’s true I’ve been hurt a few times after revealing myself. There are people who lie in wait for the vulnerable and pounce as a way to feel powerful. But God forgive them. I’m willing to take the occasional blow to find people I connect with. As long as you’re willing to turn the other cheek with the mean ones, vulnerability can get you a wealth of friends. Can you imagine coming to the end of your life, being surrounded by people who loved you, only to realize they never fully knew you? Or having poems you never shared or injustices you said nothing about? Can you imagine realizing, then, it was too late? How can we be loved if we are always in hiding?”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“Because the more we hide, the harder it is to be known. And we have to be known to connect.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“You know you’re with a Fearmonger when they overemphasize the concept of loyalty. Certainly loyalty is a virtue, but what a Fearmonger calls loyalty could better be described as complete and total submission. Fearmongers surround themselves only with people who will submit. In exchange for your submission, Fearmongers offer strength and protection, which, for many, is a security they are willing to trade their freedom for. Find a Fearmonger and you’ll easily find a team of fearful, submissive personalities doing their will.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“I remember talking to my friend Ben once about a person who had once lied to me. We’d been working on a project together, and this person lied about some of the finances. Ben is a decade older than me, a cinematographer with a gentle heart, a guy you’d think could easily be taken advantage of. But when I told him about my friend, Ben said, “Don, I’ve learned there are givers and takers in this life. I’ve slowly let the takers go and I’ve had it for the better.” He continued, “God bless them, when they learn to play by the rules they are welcomed back, but my heart is worth protecting.” At first, it was hard to act on what Ben was talking about, about the givers and the takers. I felt like a jerk for letting my friend go. But then I realized I didn’t have a healthy relationship with him in the first place. When there are lies in a relationship, it’s not like you’re actually connecting. And I realized another thing too: it wasn’t me who was walking away from my friend. It was my friend who hadn’t played by the rules and was incompatible in a healthy relationship. And here’s another thing that’s strange. After distancing myself from my friend I loved him more, not less. I protected myself for sure, but my anger went away. Once he wasn’t hurting me anymore, I could finally have compassion and grace. It makes me wonder how many people have damaged their own lives by mistaking enablement for grace?”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“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, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“It’s a phone call in the morning to pray about our day, a text-message to say I’m thinking of her, a handwritten note, a postcard when I’m out of town on business, remembering what drink she likes when we’re at a bar, asking follow-up questions about her friends, and not hiding behind humor when it’s time for a serious conversation.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“When I say I love you and you don’t believe me, you’re being a jerk. Basically what you’re saying is I only love conditionally. You think you’re being self-deprecating and funny, but you’re really saying I’m not a good enough person to love you if you have a few flaws. It gets old.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“I LIKE WHAT THE DANCER MARTHA GRAHAM ONCE said, that each of us is unique and if we didn’t exist something in the world would have been lost. I wonder, then, why we are so quick to conform—and what the world has lost because we have.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“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, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“NOT LONG AGO I WAS READING A PASSAGE IN THE Bible in which Jesus was praying for his disciples. He prayed that they would love each other, as he’d taught them to do. He prayed that they’d embrace a mission to teach other people to create communities that loved each other, as they’d experienced with him. When I read the passage, though, I saw it differently. He wasn’t just calling them into a life of sacrifice. He was calling them into a life of meaning, even the kind of meaning that would involve suffering. Suffering for a redemptive reason is hardly suffering, after all.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“I thought about how there are so many lies in fear. So much deception. What else keeps us from living a better story than fear?”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“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, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“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, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“But love doesn’t control, and I suppose that’s why it’s the ultimate risk.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“WHENEVER SOMEBODY STARTS KEEPING SCORE IN a relationship the relationship begins to die.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“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, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“[A safe person] is somebody who speaks the truth in grace.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

“Here's a thing I've noticed: the greatest leaders, the ones who impact the world the most, are somehow able to turn the other cheek. It's as though they believe so solidly in love, so robustly in forgiveness, they have the ability to forgive and even love those who attack them.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

“You are wired like you and I am wired like me. The more fully we live into ourselves, the more impact we will have. Acting may get us the applause we want, but taking a risk on being ourselves is the only path toward true intimacy. And true intimacy, the exchange of affection between two people who are not lying, is transforming.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

“if we live behind a mask we can impress but we can’t connect.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“A YEAR OR SO AGO I READ AN ARTICLE THAT SAID in the next five years we will become a conglomerate of the people we hang out with. The article went so far as to say relationships were a greater predictor of who we will become than exercise, diet, or media consumption. And if you think about it, the idea makes sense. As much as we are independent beings, contained in our own skin, the ideas and experiences we exchange with others grow into us like vines and reveal themselves in our mannerisms and language and outlook on life. If you want to make a sad person happy, start by planting them in a community of optimists.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“To me, it was a human story about what it costs to be yourself, and the reward too. It costs personal fear to be authentic but the reward is integrity, and by that I mean a soul fully integrated, no difference between his act and his actual person. Having integrity is about being the same person on the inside that we are on the outside, and if we don’t have integrity, life becomes exhausting. I wonder how many people get tempted by the gains they can make by playing a role, only to pay for those temptations in public isolation.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“A Judge personality strongly believes in right and wrong, which is great, but they also believe they are the ones who decide right and wrong and lord it over others to maintain authority and power. Right and wrong are less a moral code than they are a collar and leash they attach to others so they can lead them around. When a Judge personality is religious, they’ll use the Bible to gain control of others. The Bible becomes a book of rules they use to prove they are right rather than a book that introduces people to God.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“It’s true the manipulator is the loneliest person in the world. And the second loneliest is the person being manipulated. Unless we’re honest with each other, we can’t connect. We can’t be intimate. Only God can penetrate a manipulative person’s heart, and even then, he sits quietly, waiting for them to stop running their con.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“What if some of the most successful people in the world got that way because their success was fueled by a misappropriated need for love? What if the people we consider to be great are actually the most broken? And what if the whole time they’re seeking applause they are missing out on true intimacy because they’ve never learned how to receive it?”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy