Scary Close Quotes

“Paul paused again, and then he opened up. He confirmed that, indeed, the defining characteristic of their family was honesty and vulnerability. “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

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

“The root systems of these lies we tell ourselves tend to grow together. It’s all connected with the belief human love is conditional. But human love isn’t conditional. No love is conditional. If love is conditional, it’s just some sort of manipulation masquerading as love.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding 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. But love doesn’t control, and I suppose that’s why it’s the ultimate risk. In the end, we have to hope the person we’re giving our heart to won’t break it, and be willing to forgive them when they do, even as they will forgive us. Real love stories don’t have dictators, they have participants. Love is an ever-changing, complicated, choose-your-own adventure narrative that offers the world but guarantees nothing. When you climb a mountain or sail an ocean, you’re rewarded for staying in control. Perhaps that’s another reason true intimacy is so frightening. It’s the one thing we all want, and must give up control to get.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“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

“Grace only sticks to our imperfections.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“It’s funny what happens to you when part of your heart gets born inside somebody else.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“When I met couples whose marriages were thriving after thirty and forty years, none of them were riding an emotional roller coaster of passion and then resentment. Instead, they loved each other as an act of their conscious will. They were more in control of their love than their “love” was in control of them.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“Love can’t be earned, it can only be given.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

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

“As long as you’re willing to turn the other cheek with the mean ones, vulnerability can get you a wealth of friends.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“half the feeling of home is usually a person.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“The reality is, what writers write and the way they live can be as different as a lump of coal and a diamond. The written life is shined to a deceptive gloss.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“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

“Change only comes when we face the difficulty of reality head-on. Fantasy changes nothing, which is why, once we're done fantasizing, it feels like a bankrupt story.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“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

“God doesn’t give us crying, pooping children because he wants to advance our careers.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“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

“There’s a spirit of freedom in Portland you can’t find many other places. Austin has it a little, and Boulder has it. Nashville is glowing with it. It’s not just a hippie thing either. It’s something other, a feeling everybody else in the country is being corralled into buying just a few kinds of clothes, a couple of different records and watching the same television shows, while in these rare cities, these bastions of freedom, people have turned off their televisions to realize there are more than binary options for us to choose from. We don’t have to be either conservative or liberal or religious or atheist or divided into this or that categories. We can be ourselves, a conglomerate of nuanced beliefs and opinions.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“What do you want your marriage to look like?” he repeated. I’d never thought about it. I’d spent countless”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“I suppose that’s the point of this book. There’s truth in the idea we’re never going to be perfect in love but we can get close. And the closer we get, the healthier we will be. Love is not a game any of us can win, it’s just a story we can live and enjoy. It’s a noble ambition, then, to add a chapter to the story of love, and to make our chapter a good one.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“My faith teaches me that the path to join souls in love must of necessity involve a crucifixion, and I think there’s a metaphor in there for marriage.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“What else changes a person but the living of a story? 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

“Betsy and I are going to try as hard as we can not to put the burden of that longing on each other,” I said. “Instead, we will comfort each other in the longing and even love it for what it is, a promise that God will someday fulfill us.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“What differentiates true Christianity from the pulp many people buy into is that Jesus never offers that completion here on earth. He only asks us to trust him and follow him to the metaphorical wedding we will experience in heaven.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“Some people think of it as the longing for God, and I think they’re on to something. In my opinion, though, that longing will never be satisfied in our lifetime. In other words, 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 Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“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

“Frankl went on to say it wasn’t pleasure mankind was looking for, that men only sought pleasure when they couldn’t find meaning. If a man has no sense of meaning, Frankl argued, he will numb himself with pleasure.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“I suppose building a healthy family is possible. Maybe what children really need is simple. Maybe they just need somebody to show them it’s okay to be human.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“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 Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy