A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

When you are watching a story you can watch a character struggle and enjoy it. But when you are that character, when you’re actually living inside the story, it’s not so fun.

a story goes to the next level with two key elements, and both of them have to do with the ambition of the character. First, he said, is the thing a character wants must be very difficult to attain. The more difficult, the better the story. The reason the story is better when the ambition is difficult, Steve said, is because there is more risk, and

I don’t ever want to go back to believing life is meaningless. I know there are biochemical causes for some forms of depression, but I wish people who struggle against dark thoughts would risk their hopes on living a good story—by that I mean finding a team of people doing hard work for a noble cause, and joining them. I think they’d be surprised a

Kathy. I have brought you to this place to show you something important. This is what happens when my compassion and love leave a place. It is when people do not allow God to show up through them, she realized, that the world collapses in on itself.

Mike told us the reason he signed up to ride across America. He said he signed up so he could finish. He said he’d quit three marriages, and he wouldn’t quit a fourth. He said he’d quit on children, and he didn’t want to quit on the responsibility of being a father with the ones who still loved him. He started crying, then. Mike said he knew deep d

I wish people who struggle against dark thoughts would risk their hopes on living a good story—by that I mean finding a team of people doing hard work for a noble cause, and joining them. I think they’d be surprised at how soon their sad thoughts would dissipate, if for no other reason than they didn’t have time to think them anymore.

Here’s the truth about telling stories with your life. It’s going to sound like a great idea, and you are going to get excited about it, and then when it comes time to do the work, you’re not going to want to do it. It’s like that with writing books, and it’s like that with life. People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work

We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn’t mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. 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 the

William Zinsser says that writers “love to have written,”