Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

"I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.After that I liked jazz music.Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

"It comforts me to think that if we are created beings the thing that created us would have to be greater than us, so much greater, in fact, that we would not be able to understand it. It would have to be greater than the facts of our reality and so it would seem to us, looking out from within our reality that it would contradict reason. But reason itself would suggest it would have to be greater than reality or it would not be reasonable."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

"Today I wonder why it is God refers to Himself as 'Father' at all. This, to me, in light of the earthly representation of the role, seems a marketing mistake."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

"If you dont love somebody, it gets annoying if they tell you what to do or what to feel. When you love them, you get pleasure from their pleasure nad it makes it easy to serve. I didnt love God because i didnt know God. universe is not effected by time. Light exists outside of time.. It is still a mystery to physicists."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

"…more than a half million books, all of them smelling like dust and ink, two terrible smells that blend mystically to make something beautiful. Powells is another church to me, a paperback sort of heaven."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

"I know, from the three visits I made to him, the blended composite of love and fear that exists only in a boy's notion of his father."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

"It was a haunting feeling, the sort of sensation you get when you wonder whether you are two people, the other of which does things you can't explain, bad and terrible things."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

"I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

"The trouble with deep belief is that it costs something And there is something inside me, some selfish beast of a subtle thing that doesn't like the truth at all because it carries responsibility, and if I actually believe these things I have to do something about them. It is so, so cumbersome to believe anything. And it isn't cool."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

"Anybody who wants to get their way says that Jesus supports their view. But that isn't Jesus' fault."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

"I was starting to believe I was a character in a greater story, which is why the elements of story made sense in the first place."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

"When I walked into the Christian section of a bookstore, the message was clear: Faith is something you do alone. Rick does not have much tolerance for people living alone. He’s like Bill Clinton in that he feels everyone’s pain. If Rick thinks somebody is lonely, he can’t sleep at night. He wants us all to live with each other and play nice so he can get some rest. Tortured soul."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

"I learned that true love turns the other cheek, does not take a wrong into account, loves all people regardless of their indifference or hostility."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

"Sometimes the things we want most in life are the things that will kill us."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

"I listened so hard because it felt like, while she was telling me stories, she was massaging my soul, letting me know that I was not alone, that I will never have to be alone, that there are friends and family and churches and coffee shops. I was not going to be cast into space."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

"I lay there under the stars and thought of what a great responsibility it is to be human."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

"...the words alone, lonely, and loneliness are three of the most powerful words in the English language...those words say that we are human; they are like the words hunger and thirst. But they are not words about the body, they are words about the soul."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

"When one of my friends becomes a Christian, which happens about every 10 years because I am a sheep about sharing my faith, the experience is euphoric. I see in their eyes the trueness of the story."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

"I think if you like somebody you have to tell them. It might be embarrassing to say it, but you will never regret stepping up. I know from personal experience, however, that you should not keep telling a girl that you like her after she tells you she isn't into it. You should not keep riding your bike by her house either."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

"Everybody wants to be somebody fancy. Even if they're shy."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality