Scary Close Quotes

“IS THERE ANYTHING MORE TOXIC THAN THE FEAR of being judged? Judgment shuts us down and makes us hide. It keeps us from being ourselves, which keeps us from connecting with other people.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“I don’t believe we are accidents in the world, and I don’t believe we were supposed to be actors either. I think we were supposed to be ourselves and we were meant as a miracle.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“The whole experience makes me wonder if the time we spend trying to become somebody people will love isn’t wasted because the most powerful, most attractive person we can be is who we already are, an ever-changing being that is becoming and will never arrive, but has opinions about what is seen along the journey.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“If our identity gets broken, it affects our ability to connect. And I wonder if we’re not all a lot better for each other than we previously thought. I know we’re not perfect, but I wonder how many people are withholding the love they could provide because they secretly believe they have fatal flaws.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“After all, to love somebody is to give them the power to hurt you, and nobody can hurt you if you’re the only one writing the script.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“I am willing to express a theory. I am willing to admit I’m afraid. I’m willing to contradict something I’ve said before. I’m willing to have a knee-jerk reaction, even a wrong one. I’m willing to apologize. I’m perfectly willing to be perfectly human.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

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

“It’s no wonder I hid from the world. It’s no wonder parties made me tired or I got exhausted after I spoke. It’s no wonder criticism made me angry or I overreacted to failure. I think the part of me I sent out to interact with the world was, in some ways, underdeveloped, still trying to be bigger and smarter as a measure of survival.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“Frankl theorized a sense of meaning was existential, that it was something that passed through us not unlike the recognition of beauty or a feeling of gratitude. And he believed life could be structured in such a way people would experience meaning. His prescription to experience a deep sense of meaning, then, was remarkably pragmatic. He had three recommendations: 1. Have a project to work on, some reason to get out of bed in the morning and preferably something that serves other people. 2. Have a redemptive perspective on life’s challenges. That is, when something difficult happens, recognize the ways that difficulty also serves you. 3. Share your life with a person or people who love you unconditionally.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“I’m a writer because, at an early age, I became convinced it was the one thing I could do to earn people’s respect. It’s true in the process I learned to love words and ideas and these days I actually like to get lost in the writing process. But the early fuel, the early motivation, was all about becoming a person worth loving.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“I DON’T KNOW WHY LOVING A WOMAN IS SCARIER than climbing a mountain or sailing an ocean, but it is. A mountain can hurt your body and an ocean can drown you, but in the end you’re still a man for conquering them. Dead or alive, you’re still a man. A woman, though, can rob your manhood and reduce you to a boy at the drop of a word. It’s no wonder we all try to control each other. Sometimes relationships feel like we’re trying to emotionally cuddle with each other at the same time we’re tearing each other down.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“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. The reason I had such a rich fantasy life was partially because it gave me a sense of control. There was no risk in my fantasy life, and risk is what I feared the most. After all, to love somebody is to give them the power to hurt you, and nobody can hurt you if you’re the only one writing the script. But it doesn’t work. Controlling people are the loneliest people in the world.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“I don’t mean to overstate what is yet unknown, but part of me believes when the story of earth is told, all that will be remembered is the truth we exchanged. The vulnerable moments. The terrifying risk of love and the care we took to cultivate it. And all the rest, the distracting noises of insecurity and the flattery and the flashbulbs will flicker out like a turned-off television.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“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.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“Here’s a thought that haunts me: What if we are designed as sensitive antennas, receptors to receive love, a longing we often mistake as a need to be impressive? 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

“...but the reality is people want to work for more than just money. They want to work to build and sustain a community they love. As we shared our personal dreams with each other, my work was no longer about me reaching my goals, it was about me contributing to a team in which we'd all tied our dreams together.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

“the more children knew about their family history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem and the more successfully they believed their families functioned.” In fact, the “How much do you know about your family?” scale turned out to be the best single predictor of children’s emotional health and happiness. Dr. Duke went on to explain, however, it wasn’t just honesty about a family’s troubled narrative that fueled a child’s health. It was actually what he called the oscillating family narrative that is the true story about how the family both succeeds and fails and yet stays together regardless.”
― 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. After I read that article I got pickier about who I spent time with. I wanted to be with people who were humble and hungry, had healthy relationships, and were working to create new and better realities in the world. THE”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

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

“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

“I no longer believe love works like a fairy tale but like farming. Most of it is just getting up early and tilling the soil and then praying for rain. But if we do the work, we just might wake up one day to find an endless field of crops rolling into the horizon.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“I DON’T KNOW WHY LOVING A WOMAN IS SCARIER than climbing a mountain or sailing an ocean, but it is. A mountain can hurt your body and an ocean can drown you, but in the end you’re still a man for conquering them. Dead or alive, you’re still a man. A woman, though, can rob your manhood and reduce you to a boy at the drop of a word.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“THE LAST THING I LEARNED ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS by swimming in the pond was there are more lifeguards than sharks. What I mean is, for the most part, other people aren’t out to get us.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“I'm starting to wonder if the whole point of life is to be thankful and to live in such a way others are thankful for theirs as well.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

“I made a single decision early on. I decided I wouldn't judge my kids. No matter what they told me, I wouldn't judge them. I might have to discipline them, but I wouldn't make them feel like lesser people for their mistakes. And because of that, they learned to trust me with their deepest thoughts... We taught them the basics early. But the older they got, the more I listened without judgment as they figured out how to apply wisdom in their own lives. And they've turned out well.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

“People attack out of fear.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

“asking forgiveness involves giving power to the person you’re seeking forgiveness from.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“My broken identity turned me into a manipulator and my romantic life looked like one of those fishing shows on television, a game of catch and release in which I only held the girl long enough to snap a picture.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“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

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