Steven James > Quotes

“The gifts of the Master are these: freedom, life, hope, new direction, transformation, and intimacy with God. If the cross was the end of the story, we would have no hope. But the cross isn't the end. Jesus didn't escape from death; he conquered it and opened the way to heaven for all who will dare to believe. The truth of this moment, if we let it sweep over us, is stunning. It means Jesus really is who he claimed to be, we are really as lost as he said we are, and he really is the only way for us to intimately and spiritually connect with God again.”
― Steven James, Story: Recapture the Mystery

“God dances with the outcast.”
― Steven James, How to Smell Like God: True Stories Burning With the Scent of Heaven

“Change is not always a good thing. What I need is not change from one thing to another but transformation from who I am into who I was meant to become. Only when God's transforming power touches me can I begin to live the simpler, freer, fresher, more creative, more patient, more passionate, more sacrificial, riskier, rawer, more real, more love-driven life God intended for me all along. That transformation is what awaits all who dare to enter the story of God. As Paul wrote, 'Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think' (Romans 12:2)”
― Steven James, Story: Recapture the Mystery

“Plastic people flashing fake smiles at a pretend world.”
― Steven James, The Pawn

“Follow the evidence to where it leads, even if the conclusion is uncomfortable.”
― Steven James, The Knight

“Christianity is wild. It’s intimate. It’s heartbreaking and soul-mending. It’s the wings to rise above the everyday and hope of a honeymoon with the God who has loved you forever. The party has just begun, and the best is yet to come.”
― Steven James, Story: Recapture the Mystery

“Even if you know you're sleeping, you're still at the mercy of your dreams. People who are asleep can't simply decide to wake up. Nightmares don't let you off that easily. They hold you in their clutches until they decided, in their own good time, to let you go.”
― Steven James, Blur

“So you think the best way to prepare kids for the real world is to bus them to a government institution where they're forced to spend all day isolated with children of their own age and adults who are paid to be with them, placed in classes that are too big to allow more than a few minutes of personal interaction with the teacher-then spend probably an hour or more everyday waiting in lunch lines, car lines, bathroom lines, recess lines, classroom lines, and are forced to progress at the speed of the slowest child in class?”
― Steven James, Placebo

“The true nature of man left to himself without restraint is not nobility but savagery.”
― Steven James, The King

“We are artists. We are writers—slightly neurotic and probably addicted to coffee, late nights, sunsets, laughter, tears, and heartache. Creativity is our drug. We lose ourselves in the smell of old books. We’re bewildered by how we can live in a world this full of glory and grief and not be awestruck every moment. And we write stories to help wake people up before they fall asleep for good.”
― Steven James, Story Trumps Structure: How to Write Unforgettable Fiction by Breaking the Rules

“Patrick: How do you know so much about dating? You're a teenage girl.
Tess: Because I'm a teenage girl.”
― Steven James, The Queen

“Here is the paradox of the thing we call freedom: the farther we wander from God and the more we try to break free from him, the more enchained we become. Every step we take away from Him leads us farther from the freedom of Jesus and closer to the cruelty of Cain.”
― Steven James, Story: Recapture the Mystery

“I am a caged bird,
rattling the bars of my cage,
with furious flutterings,
break my chains!
Free my spirit!
Let me fly with the wings you have drawn upon my soul
with heaven dipped ink”
― Steven James, Story: Recapture the Mystery

“There are many times when second thoughts become chains on your soul.”
― Steven James, The King

“People don't want to be loved, they want to feel loved.”
― Steven James, Placebo

“When you get the coffee from the store, does it come in a great big metal can?'

He beamed. 'Absolutely.'

That was all I needed to hear. "Tea. A cup of tea.”
― Steven James, The Rook

“It’s deeply disturbing to think about how many people in the world are dying inside, screaming for someone, anyone, to care, reaching out again and again, sometimes to the hand that slaps them, because, all too often, without that hand they have nothing at all.”
― Steven James, The King

“A soul is only set free when it becomes constrained by the bonds of love.”
― Steven James, Checkmate

“Do you know how to turn someone into a monster?” “I’m not sure. No.” “Let him be himself without restraint.”
― Steven James, The King

“Love isn’t supposed to be something that needs to be handled; it’s supposed to be the thing that helps you handle everything else.”
― Steven James, Opening Moves

“Hatred is the result of beliefs. It is the fruit that falls from the tree of faith.”
― Steven James

“Stop feeding your pain and it’ll dissipate.”
― Steven James, Placebo: A Jevin Banks Novel

“Women should never be ashamed to be feminine. Strength comes from conviction, not from acting like a man. Being feminine doesn't mean you're weak, it just means you're proud to be a woman.”
― Steven James, The Bishop

“When you look at the world as it is, how can you not be racked with grief? But when you look closer, how can you not be overwhelmed with awe?”
― Steven James, Every Crooked Path

“In one of the paradoxes of storytelling, readers want to predict how the story will end (or how it will get to the end), but they want to be wrong.”
― Steven James, Story Trumps Structure: How to Write Unforgettable Fiction by Breaking the Rules

“We don’t need to be taught to lie, or to be selfish or cruel or vindictive—we need to be taught how not to.”
― Steven James, Opening Moves

“Jesus being born as a baby was God's way of laughing at a world trying to grow up too quickly.”
― Steven James, Sailing Between the Stars: Musings on the Mysteries of Faith

“None of us can know what it's like for someone else. It's what makes us individuals. We each have our own pain, our own mistakes. But we can reach out toward each other, help each other. That's what makes us human.”
― Steven James, The Pawn

“All of life is a complex game of strategy; moves, and countermoves, taking and losing pieces, setting up for the final”
― Steven James, The Pawn

“We want to pin a reason to it or else we get terrified anyone else might do the same thing. Including us.”
― Steven James, Every Crooked Path