Scary Close Quotes

“You’d think I’d be excited to get into shape, but I wasn’t. I don’t like to exercise, but not because it’s painful or tiring. I’ve climbed mountains in Peru and ridden my bike across America. I’m willing. The reason I don’t like exercise is because somewhere, in the deep recesses of my brain I’ve become convinced no amount of work is enough. I never leave a workout satisfied or proud of myself. And for that matter, I never quit a writing session thinking I’ve worked hard enough either. Or a teaching gig or a business meeting or anything else. I’m so bad about this I used to mow my lawn then crawl around on the grass with a pair of scissors, cutting uneven blades of grass. No kidding. I might have a problem. There are really only two things a person can do when they’re that much of a perfectionist. They can either live in the torture and push themselves to excel, or they can quit. I tend to go back and forth between the torture of working too hard and the sloth of quitting. The reason I bring this up has nothing to do with exercise or writing. I bring it up because it’s a symptom of a bigger problem, a problem that is going to affect mine and Betsy’s relationship. The problem is this: those of us who are never satisfied with our accomplishments secretly believe nobody will love us unless we’re perfect. In the outer ring Bill was talking about, the ring that covers shame, we write the word perfect and attempt to use perfection to cover our shame. I had a friend once who used to mumble curse words every time she drove by her high school algebra teacher’s house because, years before, the teacher had given her a B-.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“The hardest rule for me to keep at Onsite wasn’t about computers or cell phones. It was that we couldn’t tell people what we did for a living. Bill asked us at orientation to keep our jobs a secret. He said if we had to talk about our work life, even during therapy, to just say we were plumbers or accountants. It’s a genius rule, if you think about it. Right from the start we weren’t allowed to wear a costume. And let’s face it, most of us wear our jobs like a costume. My entire identity—my distorted sense of value—came almost exclusively from the fact I wrote books. It was torture to not tell people what I did. I never realized how much I’d used my job as a social crutch until the crutch was taken away. I must have hinted that I thought my work was important a thousand different ways. I kept saying, “As a plumber, there’s a lot of pressure on me to perform.” I did everything but wink when I said it. I must have been nauseating to be around. But deep inside, I wanted so desperately to talk about what I did because I knew people would like me if they only knew. I knew people would think I was important. Slowly, over the week, I realized I was addicted to my outer shell, that without my costume I felt vulnerable.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“WHEN I GOT TO HIGH SCHOOL, A MINISTER ASKED if I wanted to write an article for a church newsletter. When he asked, it felt like somebody had finally noticed me and wondered if there was something going on in my invisible world. I doubt that’s exactly what he was doing, but that’s the way it felt to me. I spent a solid week on the article, all of four hundred words, no more than a few paragraphs. I gave it to the minister and he called and said it was good, that I was a good writer and smart. I still remember how I felt when he said the word smart. I felt a little drunk. Kind of disoriented. A pleasure chemical seeped into my brain and, without me knowing it, I’d become Pavlov’s dog. If I was smart it meant I mattered. So I wanted to be smart. When the article came out, people stopped me in the halls to say they enjoyed reading it. My mother told me she had friends calling to say they liked the article too. And that was all I needed. I had a costume and it felt great to wear it. I could be smart. I could write, and if I wrote I mattered. So for the first time I started reading books. And I kept writing. I heard a speaker quote a poem so I went home and started memorizing poems. I wrote more than a thousand poems over the next two years. And I started dreaming about writing a book. Today, when people ask why I became a writer I try to answer honestly. 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

“Some people manage to perfect the disappearing act well into adulthood. I went out with a girl once, years ago, who would disappear whenever there was conflict. Anytime there was tension she’d just go missing, and when I’d run into her again, or when I’d go over to her house to see what was going on, she’d be all chipper and act like everything was fine. Finally, one night when she was able to be vulnerable, she explained whenever she felt like she’d messed up she could close off that part of her mind and feel an inner peace that was completely disconnected from reality. She drove everybody else crazy because she couldn’t resolve conflict, yet inside the false world of her mind everything was calm. And as crazy as it sounds, I understood her. I think she was doing the same thing I had done in junior high. She was climbing inside herself and going invisible. My invisibility act worked great for years. But then I found something better.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“How a memory as startling as that had been lost for so long is a mystery. I knew in some ways I was still that kid. Like Bill said, I was a kid wearing a costume covering who I was, my flaws and my imperfections and my humanity. I don’t know why it felt so good to realize it, but it did. I was still that kid. And here’s the other thing I suddenly realized: he was a good kid, a really good kid. I know he lied about the dog and I know he was awkward, but that was a good kid. Right there at Onsite I started crying, not because I’d peed my pants in school, but because I realized in running and hiding I’d sided with the other kids, I’d learned to believe there was something wrong with me. And it wasn’t true. I might have been different, but there was nothing wrong with me. I was such a good little kid. I was annoying, I know, but I was basically a good little kid. THAT STORY HELPED ME UNDERSTAND WHY I started developing an act in the first place. As soon as I found something I could use to cover my shame, I grabbed it and wore it around and in some ways felt like the real me was hidden behind a disguise.”
― 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 Finding True Intimacy

“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.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

“Real love stories don’t have dictators, they have participants.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“Applause is a quick fix. And love is an acquired taste. Sincerely, Donald Miller”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“SOMEBODY ONCE TOLD ME WE WILL NEVER FEEL loved until we drop the act, until we’re willing to show our true selves to the people around us.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“love makes us both strong and weak at the same time. I”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“WE’RE ALL AMATEURS WHEN IT COMES TO LOVE and relationships. I”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“The strongest character in a story isn’t the hero, it’s the guide. Yoda. Haymitch. It’s the guide who gets the hero back on track. The guide gives the hero a plan and enough confidence to enter the fight. The guide has walked the path of the hero and has the advice and wisdom to get the hero through their troubles so they can beat the resistance.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“The backside of Hollywood passion is disappointment and loneliness—and more often than not, resentment and cynicism about the nature of love itself.

Betsy and I were building more of a symphony than a pop song.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

“There are times in a man’s life when he says things he will never be able take back. It’s true words can have a physical impact on somebody. A person can concuss with their words. Words can snap as fast as a trap in the woods and leave a victim to writhe for weeks.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“They never tell you when you get born a control freak it will cost you a healthy love life. But it’s true. You can’t control somebody and have intimacy with them at the same time.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“And what is a story but the wanting for something difficult and the willingness to work for it?”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“There are no shadows in our family,” Paul said. “We don’t hide anything. But that’s a tough place to get to. It takes work and it’s painful.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

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

“talking about real life. The thought of not acting pressed on me like a terror. Can we really trust people to love us just as we are? Nobody steps onto a stage and gets a standing ovation for being human. You have to sing or dance or something. I think that’s the difference between being loved and making people clap, though. Love can’t be earned, it can only be given. And it can only be exchanged by people who are completely true with each other.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“And stories are all about conflict.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“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 no longer believe love works like a fairy tale but like farming. Most o fit 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. In my opinion, that's even better than a miracle. I'd rather earn the money than win the lottery because there's no joy in a reward unless it comes at the end of a story.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

“I'm convinced every person has a longing that will never be fulfilled and it's our job to let it live and breathe and suffer within it as a way of developing our character.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

“All relationships are teleological.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding 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. Relationships have a way of stabilizing when in motion. Until then, they just feel like a road trip to nowhere.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

“I could be judging unfairly, but all the people I've met who've really changed from unhealthy to healthy have a story, a story about hitting rock bottom, realizing what they were doing wrong, and radically changing the way they live so they don't repeat their mistakes. Characters only change when they live through a story.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

“I trust in the slow and natural process of learning to love and be loved by another person. I'd be lying if I said [my healthy relationship] was as exciting as the unhealthy relationships I'd had in the past. It wasn't. But I'd lost the taste for drama. The backside of Hollywood passion is disappointment and loneliness-- and more often than not, resentment and cynicism about the nature of love itself. My healthy relationship was more of a symphony than a pop song. Don't get me wrong. Love is wonderful and our season of getting to know each other was the harvest of a long season of farming. But true intimacy is just like that: it's the food you grow from well-tilled ground. And like most things good for us, it's an acquired taste.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

“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. God bless them, when they learn to play by the rules they are welcomed back, but my heart is worth protecting.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

“It's hard for me to admit, but there are people who become rocks who hinder others. Perhaps there is redemption for these people and perhaps there is hope, but this doesn't change the fact that they are not safe. I only say this because a positive evolution happened in my life when I realized healthy relationships happen best between healthy people. I'm not just talking about romance either. I'm talking about friendships, neighbors, and people we agree to do business with.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy