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

Book by Donald Miller · 12 quotes · Stories, Ifs, Thinking

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

“I've wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don't want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgment. We don't want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn't remarkable, then we don't have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims instead of grateful participants.”

IfsWantReasonCharacterStoriesFacesMovingLife IsResponsibilityFailingConflictVictimGratefulBreatheAcknowledgeRemarkableInherentThousand YearsBrillianceUnwillingParticipantsAcknowledgment
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“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 only that, it would be beautiful again.”

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“When you fly across the country in an airplane the country seems vast; but it isn't vast. It's all connected by roads one can ride a bike down. If you watch the news and there's a tragedy at a house in Kansas, that guy's driveway connects with yours, and you'd be surprised by how few roads it takes to get there.”

IfsCountrySeemsGuyHouseWatchesNewsTragedyConnectedAirplaneBikeThat GuyKansasDriveway
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“The most often repeated commandment in the Bible is 'Do not fear.' It's in there over two hundred times. That means a couple of things, if you think about it. It means we are going to be afraid, and it means we shouldn't let fear boss us around. Before I realized we were supposed to fight fear, I thought of fear as a subtle suggestion in our subconscious designed to keep us safe, or more important, keep us from getting humiliated. And I guess it serves that purpose. But 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.”

IfsThinkingMeanTwoImportantPurposeFightingEmotionCoupleSafeHundredBoringGuidesI RealizedTricksSubtleBossCommandmentsSubconsciousSuggestionsMondayHumiliatedDo Not FearManipulativeBoring Life
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“If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation. If I got any comfort as I set out on my first story, it was that in nearly every story, the protagonist is transformed. He's a jerk at the beginning and nice at the end, or a coward at the beginning and brave at the end. If the character doesn't change, the story hasn't happened yet. And if story is derived from real life, if story is just condensed version of life then life itself may be designed to change us so that we evolve from one kind of person to another.”

IfsFirstsKindMayPersonsRealEndsCharacterStoriesLife IsNiceHappenedComfortTransformationBraveReal LifeVersionsEvolveCowardTransformedJerkProtagonists
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“If I have a hope, it's that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, “Enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you.””

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“If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn’t cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers. You wouldn’t tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on to think about the story you’d seen. The truth is, you wouldn’t remember that movie a week later, except you’d feel robbed and want your money back. Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo.”

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