Joy Costs Pain

I HIGHLY recommend this book: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, by Donald Miller.  Go read this book.  Rather than describe the story, the characters, the plot, I'll just share some of the best quotes.  Enjoy.

"A story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it."

"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 acknowledgement.  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 rather than grateful participants."

"Once you know what it takes to live a better story, you don't have a choice.  Not living a better story would be like deciding to die, deciding to walk around number until you die, and it's not natural to want to die." 

"Our interaction with each other, with the outside world, and with intangible elements such as time made us different people every season... people get stuck, thinking they are one kind of person, but they aren't... the human body essentially recreates itself every six months.  Nearly every cell of hair and skin and bone dies and another is directed to its former place... we were designed to live through something rather than to attain something, and the thing we were meant to live through was designed to change us.  The point of a story is the character arc, the change."  

"A character is what he does."  

"People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen.  But joy costs pain."  

"Robert McKee says humans naturally seek comfort and stability.  Without an inciting incident that disrupts their comfort, they won't enter into a story.  They have to get fired from their job or be forced to sign up for a marathon.  A ring has to be purchased.  A home has to be sold.  The character has to jump into the story, into the discomfort and the fear, otherwise the story will never happen."  

"The great stories go to those who don't give in to fear."

"It made me wonder if the reasons our lives seem so muddled is because we keep walking into scenes in which we, along with the people around us, have no clear idea what we want."

"The world needs for us to have courage.  The world needs for us to write something better."  

"The ambitions we have will become the stories we live.  If you want to know what a person's story is about, just ask them what they want.  If we don't want anything, we are living boring stories..."  

"You didn't think joy could change a person did you?  Joy is what you feel when the conflict is over.  But it's conflict that changes a person... you put your characters through hell.  You put them through hell.  That's the only way we change."  

"When something bad happens to you, you have two choices in how to deal with it.  You can either get bitter or better."

"I think this is when most people give up on their stories.  They come out of college wanting to change the world, wanting to get married, wanting to have kids and change the way people buy office supplies.  But they get into the middle and discover it was harder than they thought.  They can't see the distant shore anymore, and they wonder if their paddling is moving them forward.  None of the trees behind them are getting smaller and none of the trees ahead are getting bigger.  They take it out on their spouses and they go looking for an easier story."

"The story of the forest is better than the story of the tree."  

"A good movie has memorable scenes, and so does a good life."  

"A good storyteller speaks something into nothing.  Where there is an absence of story, or perhaps a bad story, a good storyteller walks in and changes reality.  He doesn't critique the existing story, or lament about his boredom, like a critic.  He just tells something different and invites people into the story he is telling."

"The trip taught us that we were all neighbors, that my life is connected to everybody else's, that on person's story has the power to affect a million others."

"It's interesting that in the Bible, in the book of Ecclesiastes, the only practical advice given about living a meaningful life is to find a job you like, enjoy your marriage and obey God. It's as though God is saying, Write a good story, take someone with you, and let me help."  

"It's a good calling then, to speak a better story.  How brightly a better story shines.  How easily the world looks to it in wonder.  How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat them."