Shauna Niequist Quotes

“It’s easy to be liked by strangers. It’s very hard to be loved and connected to the people in your home when you’re always bringing them your most exhausted self and resenting the fact that the scraps you’re giving them aren’t cutting it.”

“I don’t want to miss the actual fabric of the interior of my life and the beautiful children growing up right this second in my own home because I’m working to please people somewhere out there. I’m afraid I’m missing it, I’m afraid I’m doing it wrong, and I want to know that I can change.”

“We have some say over the size of our own lives—we have the agency and authority and freedom to make them smaller or larger, heavier or lighter”

Draw close to people who honor your no, who cheer you on for telling the truth, who value your growth more than they value their own needs getting met or their own pathologies celebrated.”

“You get to tell the truth about what you love and who you are and what you dream about.”

“Sometimes being brave is being quiet. Being brave is getting off the drug of performance. For me, being brave is trusting that what my God is asking of me,what my family and community is asking from me, is totally different than what our culture says I should do. Sometimes, brave looks boring, and that’s totally, absolutely, okay.”

“if you’re not careful with your yeses, you start to say no to some very important things without even realizing it.”

“We were all raised to build, build, build. Bigger is better, more is better, faster is better. It had never occurred to us…that someone would intentionally keep something small, or deliberately do something slow.”

“I used to believe, in the deepest part of me, that there was something irreparably wrong with me. And love was a lie. Now I’m beginning to see that love is the truth, and the darkness is a lie.”

“Present over perfect living is real over image, connecting over comparing,meaning over mania, depth over artifice.”

“Hold close to your essential self. Get to know it, the way you get to know everything in the world about someone you’re in love with, the way you know your child, their every freckle and preference and which cry means what.”

“In the silence, I have found love. I have found love, and peace, and stillness, and gratitude. I used to overwork in order to feel important. What I’m learning now is that feeling important to someone else isn’t valuable to me the way I thought it was. Feeling connected is very valuable.”

“That’s how it is when you leave these things behind—busyness, exhaustion,codependence, compulsive anything—you can see the cracks and brokennesses in your relationships for what they really are, and you realize that you can’t move forward the way you have been, that you have to either fix the cracks or let the connection break—those are the only two honest ways.″”

“When you allow other people to determine your best choices; when you allow yourself to be carried along by what other people think your life should be, could be,must be; when you hand them the pen and tell them to write your story, you don’t get the pen back. Not easily anyway.″

″What would our lives be like if our days were studded by tiny, completely unproductive, silly, nonstrategic, wild and beautiful five-minute breaks,reminders that our days are for loving and learning and laughing, not for pushing and planning, reminders that it’s all about the heart, not about the hustle?″

″It’s been said a million times that the most important things aren’t things. But if we’re not careful, it seems, many of us find ourselves overwhelmed by all the stuff we have to manage, instead of focused on what we’re most passionate about—writing or making or painting or connecting with people.″

″How we live matters, and what you choose to own will shape your life,whether you choose to admit it or not. Let’s live lightly, freely, courageously, surrounded only by what brings joy, simplicity, and beauty.″

“Here it is. Here’s the love. Here’s the love: it’s in marriage and parenting. It’s in family and friends. It’s in sacrifice and forgiveness. It’s in dinner around the coffee table and long walks. It’s in the hands and faces of the people we see every day, in the whispers of our prayers and hymns and songs. It’s in our neighborhoods and churches, our classrooms and living rooms, on the water and in the stories we tell.And let me tell you where it’s not: it’s not in numbers—numbers in bank accounts, numbers on scales, numbers on report cards or credit scores.″

“Years ago, a wise friend told me that no one ever changes until the pain level gets high enough.”

“The moments that I’ve allowed – or forced – myself to stop, to rest, to breathe, to connect. Thats where life is, I’m finding. Thats where grace is. Thats where delight is.”