Ann Voskamp

“Losses do that. One life-loss can infect the whole of a life. Like a rash that wears through our days, our sight becomes peppered with black voids. Now everywhere we look, we only see all that isn’t: holes, lack, deficiency.”

“Pick up a yardstick to measure your life against anyone else's, and you've just picked up a stick and beaten up your own soul.”

“The only way to fight a feeling is with a feeling.”

“That which tears open our souls, those holes that splatter our sight, may actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart-aching beauty beyond. To Him. To the God whom we endlessly crave.”

“Could a name be any shorter? Three letters without even the flourish of an e. Ann, a trio of curves and lines.It means “full of grace”.”

“This day is not a sieve, losing time. With each passing minute, each passing year, there's this deepening awareness that I am filling, gaining time. We stand on the brink of eternity.”

“The parent must always self-parent first, self-preach before child-teach, because who can bring peace unless they’ve held their own peace?”

“We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks. Because how else do we accept His free gift of salvation if not with thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives. Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our Yes! to His grace.”

“I write a chapter, then edit it and edit it and edit it and edit it. I don't think we mine creativity from within. It's bestowed from on high, from God.”

“Do I really smother my own joy because I believe that anger achieves more than love?”

“The real romantics are the boring ones - they let another heart bore a hole deep into theirs.”

“Stress isn't only a joy stealer. The way we respond to it can be sin.”

“How to 'live' in a state of awe when life is mundane and ordinary?”

“Here I can become the blessing, a little life that multiplies joy, making the larger world a better place.God can enter into me, even me, and use these hands, these feet, to be His love, a love that goes on and on and on forever, endless cycle of grace.”

“Fullness of joy is discovered only in the emptying of will.”

“Awe ignites joy because it makes us bend the knee.”

“Get this, kids - how a man proposes isn't what makes him romantic. It's how a man purposes to lay down his life that makes him romantic.”

“Whatever I'm writing comes organically out of my life.”

“I'm not a fast writer at all. I come empty and wait upon the Lord. So it really is all a waiting process, a patient process.”

“How does it save the world to reject unabashed joy when it is joy that saves us? Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering. The converse does. (Page 58)”