Kendall Miller > Kendall's Quotes

“A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth.”
― Tim O'Brien

“War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen.”
― Tim O'Brien

“you're never more alive than when you're almost dead.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

“We refuse to turn off our computers, turn off our phone, log off Facebook, and just sit in silence, because in those moments we might actually have to face up to who we really are.”
― Jefferson Bethke, Jesus > Religion: Why He Is So Much Better Than Trying Harder, Doing More, and Being Good Enough

“The Bible isn't a rule book. It's a love letter. I'm not an employee. I'm a child. It's not about my performance. It's about Jesus' performance for me. Grace isn't there for some future me but for the real me. The me who struggled. The me who was messy. ..... He loves me in my mess; he was not waiting until I cleaned myself up.”
― Jefferson Bethke, Jesus > Religion: Why He Is So Much Better Than Trying Harder, Doing More, and Being Good Enough

“We were set up to love. To absorb the love of God into our bloodstream and then to share it with another human being.”
― John Mark Comer, Loveology: God. Love. Marriage. Sex. And the Never-Ending Story of Male and Female.

“It’s not failure if you fail at doing something you’re not supposed to do. It’s success. Because with each success, and with each so-called failure, you’re getting a clearer sense of your calling.”
― John Mark Comer, Garden City: Work, Rest, and the Art of Being Human.

“I love Tim Keller’s definition of work. He puts it this way: work is “rearranging the raw material of God’s creation in such a way that it helps the world in general, and people in particular, thrive and flourish.”
― John Mark Comer, Garden City: Work, Rest, and the Art of Being Human.