N.D. Wilson Quotes

Quotes about:

Children Dying Enemies Evil Eyes Giving Laughter

Sometimes standing against evil is more important than defeating it. The greatest heroes stand because it is right to do so, not because they believe they will walk away with their lives. Such selfless courage is a victory in itself.

N.D. Wilson

Courage, Believe, Hero

N. D. Wilson (2009). “Dandelion Fire: Book 2 of the 100 Cupboards”, p.173, Random House Books for Young Readers

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The moon was up, painting the world silver, making things look just a little more alive.

N.D. Wilson

Moon, Looks, Alive

N. D. Wilson (2008). “Leepike Ridge”, p.16, Random House Books for Young Readers

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The world is rated R, and no one is checking IDs. Do not try to make it G by imagining the shadows away. Do not try to hide your children from the world forever, but do not pretend there is no danger . Train them. Give them sharp eyes and bellies full of laughter. Make them dangerous. Make them yeast, and when they’ve grown, they will pollute the shadows.

N.D. Wilson

Laughter, Children, Eye

"Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God's Spoken World".

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Do not resent your place in the story. Do not imagine yourself elsewhere. Do not close your eyes and picture a world without thorns, without shadows, without hawks. Change this world. Use your body like a tool meant to be used up, discarded, and replaced. Better every life you touch. We will reach the final chapter. When we have eyes that can stare into the sun, eyes that only squint for the Shenikah, then we will see laughing children pulling cobras by their tails, and hawks and rabbits playing tag.

N.D. Wilson

Children, Eye, Laughing

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Drink your wine. Laugh from your gut. Burden your moments with thankfulness. Be as empty as you can be when that clock winds down. Spend your life. And if time is a river, may you leave a wake.

N.D. Wilson

Wine, Wind, Rivers

N. D. Wilson (2013). “Death by Living: Life Is Meant to Be Spent”, p.117, Thomas Nelson Inc

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Sometimes standing against evil is more important than defeating it.

N.D. Wilson

Evil, Important, Sometimes

N. D. Wilson (2009). “Dandelion Fire: Book 2 of the 100 Cupboards”, p.172, Random House Books for Young Readers

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God is a God of galaxies, of storms, of roaring seas and boiling thunder, but He is also the God of bread baking, of a child's smile, of dust motes in the sun. He is who He is, and always shall be. Look around you now. He is speaking always and everywhere. His personality can be seen and known and leaned upon. The sun is belching flares while mountains scrape our sky while ants are milking aphids on their colonial leaves and dolphins are laughing in the surf and wheat is rippling and wind is whipping and a boy is looking into the eyes of a girl and mortals are dying.

N.D. Wilson

Girl, Children, Eye

N. D. Wilson (2013). “Death by Living: Life Is Meant to Be Spent”, p.162, Thomas Nelson Inc

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Man is born to trouble. Man is born for trouble. Man is born to battle trouble. Man is born for the fight, to be forged and molded--under torch and hammer and chisel--into a sharper, finer, stronger image of God.

N.D. Wilson

Fighting, Men, Battle

N. D. Wilson (2013). “Death by Living: Life Is Meant to Be Spent”, p.69, Thomas Nelson Inc

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Understand this: we are both tiny and massive. We are nothing more than molded clay given breath, but we are nothing less than divine self-portraits, huffing and puffing along the mountain ranges of epic narrative arcs prepared for us by the Infinite Word Himself.

N.D. Wilson

Epic, Mountain Ranges, Self

N. D. Wilson (2013). “Death by Living: Life Is Meant to Be Spent”, p.6, Thomas Nelson Inc

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Life is a story. Why do we die? Because we live. Why do we live? Because our Maker opened His mouth and began to tell a story.

N.D. Wilson

Stories, Mouths, Life Is

N. D. Wilson (2013). “Death by Living: Life Is Meant to Be Spent”, p.80, Thomas Nelson Inc

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Lay your life down. Your heartbeats cannot be hoarded. Your reservoir of breaths is draining away. You have hands, blister them while you can. You have bones, make them strain - they can carry nothing in the grave. You have lungs, let them spill with laughter.

N.D. Wilson

Laughter, Hands, Bones

N. D. Wilson (2013). “Death by Living: Life Is Meant to Be Spent”, p.84, Thomas Nelson Inc

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To love is to be selfless. To be selfless is to be fearless. To be fearless is to strip your enemies of their greatest weapon. Even if they break our bodies and drain our blood, we are unvanquished. Our goal was never to live; our goal is to love. It is the goal of all truly noble men and women. Give all that can be given. Give even your life itself.

N.D. Wilson

Love Is, Men, Noble Man

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Cowards live for the sake of living, but for heroes, life is a weapon, a thing to be spent, a gift to be given to the weak and the lost and the weary, even to the foolish and the cowardly.

N.D. Wilson

Hero, Coward, Weapons

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We grasp because God does. We create, and fall short, because God does. We continue creating because we fell short, and fall short again, because God does. Because one act of creation, one attempt at capture, is only one breath and we must breathe again. And again. And again. Here we stand (and sit and sleep), the many images of the Imager, and we can do no other.

N.D. Wilson

Fall, Sleep, Creating

N. D. Wilson (2013). “Death by Living: Life Is Meant to Be Spent”, p.62, Thomas Nelson Inc

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Horace smiled. "Always breakfast like a man condemned. One never knows that a day may bring."

N.D. Wilson

Men, Breakfast, May

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Do not fear the shadowy places. You will never be the first one there. Another went ahead and down until He came out the other side.

N.D. Wilson

Firsts, Sides, Do Not Fear

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Do you dislike your role in the story, your place in the shadow? What complaints do you have that the hobbits could not have heaved at Tolkien? You have been born into a narrative, you have been given freedom. Act, and act well until you reach your final scene.

N.D. Wilson

Shadow, Finals, Roles

N. D. Wilson (2013). “Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God's Spoken World”, p.54, Thomas Nelson

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The fall of man did not introduce evil; it placed us on the wrong side of it, under its rule, needing rescue.

N.D. Wilson

Fall, Men, Evil

N. D. Wilson (2013). “Death by Living: Life Is Meant to Be Spent”, p.77, Thomas Nelson Inc

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As long as I'm dealing in honesty, I may as well admit that I have been more influenced (as a person) by my childhood readings of Tolkien and Lewis than I have been by any philosophers I read in college and grad school. The events and characters in Narnia and Middle Earth shaped my ideals, my dreams, my goals. Kant just annoyed me.

N.D. Wilson

Dream, Honesty, Reading

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That wasn't me. I'm not a morning person. There's another person inside of me that does all the morning things.

N.D. Wilson

Morning, Doe, Persons

N. D. Wilson (2011). “The Dragon's Tooth (Ashtown Burials #1)”, p.268, Random House Books for Young Readers

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In this story, the sun moves. In this story, every night meets a dawn and burns away in the bright morning. In this story, Winter can never hold back the Spring... He is the best of all possible audiences, the only Audience to see every scene, the Author who became a Character and heaped every shadow on Himself. The Greeks were right. Live in fear of a grinding end and a dank hereafter. Unless you know a bigger God, or better yet, are related to Him by blood.

N.D. Wilson

Morning, Spring, Moving

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Imagine a poem written with such enormous three-dimensional words that we had to invent a smaller word to reference each of the big ones; that we had to rewrite the whole thing in shorthand, smashing it into two dimensions, just to talk about it. Or don’t imagine it. Look outside. Human language is our attempt at navigating God’s language; it is us running between the lines of His epic, climbing on the vowels and building houses out of the consonants.

N.D. Wilson

Running, Epic, Climbing

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Caves and darkness can't hold you when you die, they can only hold your bones.

N.D. Wilson

Darkness, Caves, Bones

N. D. Wilson (2008). “Leepike Ridge”, p.139, Random House Books for Young Readers

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No place is ever the same tomorrow.

N.D. Wilson

Tomorrow

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Kansas is not easily impressed. It has seen houses fly and cattle soar. When funnel clouds walk through the wheat, big hail falls behind. As the biggest stones melt, turtles and mice and fish and even men can be seen frozen inside. And Kansas is not surprised. Henry York had seen things in Kansas, things he didn't think belonged in this world. Things that didn't. Kansas hadn't flinched.

N.D. Wilson

Fall, Men, Thinking

N. D. Wilson (2009). “Dandelion Fire: Book 2 of the 100 Cupboards”, p.1, Random House Books for Young Readers

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Born: 1978
Occupation: Author
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