Amanda Dykes > Quotes

“He is coming, and coming, and coming, and coming after you. In every sunset, in every snatch of birdsong In everything that stirs deep into you and makes you hungry for bigger things, eternal things. That is Him, pursuing you with tenderest grace. In the places so hard they wring your soul. In the places so beautiful they steal your breath. He is there, filling your soul, giving you breath.”
― Amanda Dykes, Set the Stars Alight

“The world is dark, so dark we sometimes forget the stars. But they are always there - we need only fight to see these brilliant places of light, these echoes of the truest story. Of a man who gave his life for another - and of a Man, centuries before him, who gave His life for the world. The One who is coming....and coming.....and coming after you. Fighting for your heart. Every breathe a gift.”
― Amanda Dykes, Set the Stars Alight

“I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages.”
― Amanda Dykes, Whose Waves These Are

“The strength of the storm does not change whose waves these are. There is One mightier still.”
― Amanda Dykes, Whose Waves These Are

“The way the girl soaked in the world around her, gathered treasures, and searched for miracles-and found them right where she walked and breathed and lived her moments. Hers was a rich, deep, expansive life right there on that farm.”
― Amanda Dykes, Set the Stars Alight

“I didn’t feel like a whole person. Just a handful of pieces, not sure how they all fit together.”
― Amanda Dykes, Whose Waves These Are

“I think it’s our duty to keep the stories, to pass them on. It is our duty—and our honor. In a world as dark as ours, we—that is, people—forget how to see the light. So we remind them by telling the truth, fighting the dark, paying attention . . . setting the stars alight. There are things shining brightly all along, if we will notice.”
― Amanda Dykes, Set the Stars Alight

“I sometimes think, when our dreams seem impossible to us, perhaps we just haven't seen yet how God will chase after our hearts with those very dreams, in the unlikeliest ways.”
― Amanda Dykes, Born of Gilded Mountains

“Here they were. Two souls, buried alive beneath the earth beside the sea, in a place of nowhere - an empty cave that felt impossibly full as Juliette took flight where there was no sky.”
― Amanda Dykes, Set the Stars Alight

“He is coming, and coming, and coming after you. In every sunset, in every snatch of birdsong In everything that stirs deep into you and makes you hungry for bigger things, eternal things. That is Him, pursuing you with tenderest grace. In the places so hard they wring your soul. In the places so beautiful they steal your breath. He is there, filling your soul, giving you breath.”
― Amanda Dykes, Set the Stars Alight

“And Bob knows too well, when you've been without air so long you can't remember another way of life, even a single breath of fresh air is a lifeline.”
― Amanda Dykes, Whose Waves These Are

“Such freedom, to know our limits. And to know the God who has none.”
― Amanda Dykes, Set the Stars Alight

“It is a gift - time is what we have been given. Whatever else our lot - whatever our legacy, our history, our burdens to bear - we have all been given time.”
― Amanda Dykes, All the Lost Places

“This is a tapestry of every sunset and sunrise …It reminds me that if the sun comes up, the day has beautiful purpose. For God made it so, yes?”
― Amanda Dykes, All the Lost Places

“Impossible’s where the miracles happen, Ed. If I stay put…I might have more chance at life, but what sort of livin’ is that, when I was made to do this?”
― Amanda Dykes, Whose Waves These Are

“You don't look at a book and see only paper and ink. You seem to - to somehow feel it. The heart who wrote it, the lives in the pictures taking on heartbeats so that you can look at the faces of the people in one book and recognize in them the souls from another.”
― Amanda Dykes, All the Lost Places

“A lifetime ago, he’d dreamed of standing here at the gate with a bouquet at this back for her. He’d hoped back then to win her heart…and now he must break it.”
― Amanda Dykes, Whose Waves These Are

“Everyone knows. I think even Clara knows, deep down, though she's convinced that advertising that the farm is wireless - for her meaning without Internet - adds to the draw of the place. So we all pretend it's not here and only use it when we have to. And life is better without it, honestly. It's nice not being constantly connected. It makes us... more connected, ironically.”
― Amanda Dykes, Set the Stars Alight

“He would never forget the impression of that voice on his heart. It was the voice of the man, who, king of the universe, stooped to wash his own disciples' earth crusted feet. Who rubbed spit into dirt and used the mud to make a blind man see. Whose royal day of birth was enrobed in dust, right there with the animals in a barn. That man was accustomed to doing great things in humble places, and it usually involved dirt. or rocks, as it were. The same God who told a solitary man to build a boat to prepare for a flood when no one had so much as seen a drop of water fall from the sky in all their lives.”
― Amanda Dykes, Whose Waves These Are

“And didn't God create each and every story - singleness and marriage alike - with just as much care and meaning?”
― Amanda Dykes, Born of Gilded Mountains

“She watches his complete abandon, haunted by the fullness of the song of this man with two letters to his name and a million to his story.”
― Amanda Dykes, Whose Waves These Are

“On a stage of earth, beneath a canopy of stars, with a score of scattered laughter, Mercy watched a story unfold more enchanting than any the Dream Factory of Hollywood could have produced. Even the applause of the people, drifting up to meet and mingle with that of the aspen leaves, felt ethereal.”
― Amanda Dykes, Born of Gilded Mountains

“A life well lived is a life well given.”
― Amanda Dykes, Whose Waves These Are

“The risk of 'too much' is better than the regret of 'too little,' I think, Willa said.”
― Amanda Dykes, Born of Gilded Mountains

“Friendship, he began to see, was something of a miracle. Built in the smallest of stitches, like Valentina’s lace. Each stitch a word, a look, the offering of a hand to help on unsteady ground. Small and almost imperceptible, these stitches, but all together … they wove a garment that wrapped a heart.”
― Amanda Dykes, All the Lost Places

“And understanding, I had learned, came more often through listening than only by seeing and drawing conclusions.”
― Amanda Dykes, All the Lost Places

“Sometimes being a friend means being a keeper if their treasure bin the times they can't hold onto it.”
― Amanda Dykes, Born of Gilded Mountains

“Sunsets here were more an experience than a sight. They marked the soul. Pierced it, rearranged things with all that shifting color and light, and sealed it up again, a little more whole than it was before. The streaks of color across the sky just now were no exception.”
― Amanda Dykes, Born of Gilded Mountains

“He said it was time to be a part of the unbreaking, of the making of something. He told me there was a Carpenter who was going to build me right up, too.”
― Amanda Dykes, Whose Waves These Are

“Willa's sweet voice, the way her own broken story wrapped around the word OURS... it meant belonging and freedom. And to belong... didn't one have to be known? And to be known... didn't one have to let people in?”
― Amanda Dykes, Born of Gilded Mountains