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

"When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are. And when you stop expecting material possessions to complete you, you’d be surprised at how much pleasure you get in material possessions. And when you stop expecting God to end all your troubles, you’d be surprised how much you like spending time with God."

"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, and if we want a Roomba vaccum cleaner, we are living stupid stories. If it won’t work in a story, it won’t work in life."

"Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in. We think God is unjust, rather than a master storyteller."

"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."

"A good storyteller doesn’t just tell a better story, though. He invites other people into the story with him, giving them a better story too."

"When we look back on our lives, what we will remember are the crazy things we did, the times we worked harder to make a day stand out."

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