Hannah Brencher Quotes

Some people are dotted lines and other people are destinations. Some people get you somewhere and some people are just a place to be, all in themselves. But you cannot force those dotted lines into destinations.

Looking back, I wish that everyone could have that sort of moment: a moment where you realize that your hands are so impossibly small and this world is so impossibly big. And the two don’t seem to add up. Maybe recognizing the smallness of your own hands is just the very first step to changing anything at all.

And I learned from her that it is one thing to be the girl on fire, but it is entirely another thing to be the girl who manages to set the world on fire with all the quiet and beautiful things she does.

...the definition of agape is loving a person for exactly who they are - not who we hope they'll become with enough fixing.

Even though love covers all things, fear is what keeps us silent and keeps words unsaid. Fear keeps us standing in one place. Eventually, when it wins, it means we never got the courage to say what we needed to say.

The best gift you are ever going to give someone— the permission to feel safe in their own skin. To feel worthy. To feel like they are enough.

Life hands you a list of things you can keep. People are not things - you can't keep them.

Maybe we’re all a how are you away from not feeling so alone in all of this today.

I cried because sometimes no matter what you try to hide behind— letters or texts or emails or a busy schedule— life still finds a way to barrel through all the distractions. And life still hurts. Even though it's beautiful.

Life is a series of letting - go moments.

Good-byes hurt. And they happen too much. The only thing I know for certain about this whole good-bye thing? You have to say it sometimes. You have to get real brave, and bite your bottom lip, and let people go sometimes. Fully, fully. Whether you feel ready or not, you're still going to grow up and use that word a lot more than you ever expected to.

Build from the selfless place inside of you that is not big or loud or selfish or proud. Build from that little spot inside of you that burns quietly and unceasingly for others. Remember: whatever is burrowed deep in one hungry soul is bound to be tethered to the hearts of many, many more.

I needed to witness what it looked like when you eventually stopped asking questions and just started living the answers out loud.

Like why do we even have to go through meeting people when we know they aren't going to stay in our lives?

When it came to talking with God, I wanted to believe he was like those stars. If I looked, he’d be there. I’d lost a lot of things in the years that led up to this point - shoes and keys and books and boyfriends - but I never lost that hope

God is a lot of things to a lot of people but I don’t think he is a cheap party host with limited grace to give out.

I pocketed strangers in my memory, one by one, and tied them closer for...all the ways they looked like me.

That’s why I wanted to be a writer - because someone I loved told me I could be one.

And that’s the truth I needed to swallow: people don’t step out and love for you; that’s on you. You have to be the one to get down deep enough and whisper the words people can’t always say for you - whether you believe in them full or not - “I choose you. I choose you.

We don’t know how much we are capable of loving until the people we love are being taken away, until a beautiful story is ending.

Remember: whatever is burrowed deep in one hungry soul is bound to be tethered to the hearts of many, many more.

I learned vulnerability is a bit like those Russian nesting dolls, the ones that get smaller and smaller in size when you twist the top off and pull another one out. In the end, you’re left with the tiniest dull, that one nugget. No more layers to take off. Nothing left but a surprise, the surprise of finding out the littlest doll is the most solid of them all. It doesn’t hide inside of itself.

Grace is letting something else—something so much bigger than you—carry you home. It’s having and wanting nowhere else to be but in a moment that wants you and takes you just as you are.

Agape" is loving a person for exactly who they are - not who we hope they'll become with enough fixing. It's this idea that every person has their layers, so you can never confine a person to only what you know about them from the first glance. It's stacked on the premise that to love anyone is to hope in them always.

Do small things. On repeat. And think about others. I think that's it. That's all. I don't even worry anymore about becoming a piece of someone's history because (a) knowing isn't the point and (b) sometimes our greatest points of impact will be the kind we never come to know about.

There is something remarkable about just the thought of someone sitting down for you. Taking out a piece of paper for you. Focusing their mind on the words they write for you. And through sloppy cursive and a cramped hand, they manage to tell you all the things that have ever mattered, in between the lines: “I care. I’m here. I see you. You’re more than just words on a screen to me.

Finally, finally, this is what bravery looks like. This is what courage looks like. It has nothing to do with dominating the day, every single day. It has to do with showing up and speaking truth. One true sentence after one true sentence.

I believe now that we’re the enemy to the things we really want for our lives. We get really good at telling ourselves ugly lies on repeat every day. You’re unworthy. You’re ugly. You’re inadequate.

You're worth it. You are absolutely, unbelievably worth it and you were made for mighty things. Keep pushing on. Keep pressing. Don't let anyone in this wide, wide world ever try to snuff out the light you bring. You have to know it matters. The world is going to try to convince you otherwise but don't listen. Please. Don't. Listen. You are a marvel. It matters that you are here.

The professor taught with the confidence that books change you. They mess up your insides. They make you drool over the prospect of being a better human and a better lover and a better friend. They pull at your stomach and leave you raw and open and naked. Books can straight up mangle you and sometimes it’s just better if you let them do their work.

I could have told you that the reason a lot of people never do anything, or go anywhere, or move to the place they've always wanted to move to or go after the things they always talked about, rarely boils down to other people's not believing in them. I believe now that we're the enemy to the things we really want for our lives. We get really good at telling ourselves ugly lies on repeat every day. "You're unworthy." "You're ugly." "You're inadequate.

I could feel God. It was like he was setting fine fingerprints all over the moment. I could feel him in it, as if he were saying to me, “Girl, I’m gonna blow the hinges off anything you think a love letter is, was , or could be. If you would just release the grip, I could turn your whole like into a love letter.

More than anything, I hope you know that it matters that you're here.

Things will fit eventually. Maybe not right away. Maybe not today. But as long as you keep trying things on, and shedding things, you'll eventually find the right fit.

I feel things too deeply.

I believe now that we're the enemy to the things we really want for our lives. We get really good at telling ourselves ugly lies on repeat.

I want to seem put together in front of a person who earns a living trying to help me get all the pieces back together.

I'm just the product of my grandmother telling me for years she would see my name on the spines of books.

If joy could break windows and hallelujahs could break floorboards, this church would have been broken down by noon.

I had to take the first step for myself.

With love, there's always more left over. Fear shrinks and shrivels. Fear has an expiration date. But love keeps on growing keeps on giving with more than enough for everyone.

Sometimes you pray, and sometimes you are the answered prayer.

That is the trickiness of depression though. He doesn’t easily let you draw maps of him. He won’t tell you where you’re headed. You might have forests and I might have bogs. The most important thing is you just keep going. With no map. And no compass. And sometimes not even real truth to guide you. You just have to keep going. And along the way, you find things to hold tight to. Hope. And good conversations. And people who stick with you until morning. You find things to clutch. For me, that was a yellow towel from my mother.

I think we worship these stories of leaving it all behind and going somewhere new, but I’m beginning to see that every one of those stories has the same truth holding up this romantic idea of leaving: The stuff you’re not facing will follow you. It will get in the car too. It will pack a bag too. Leaving isn’t the key; changing is. I’m learning that life isn’t about the destinations we can boast about getting to; it’s about all the walking in between that feels pointless when you try to take a picture of it because no one will understand it like you do. It’s the in between stuff that fleshes out a story—gives it guts and transformation. It’s not about the scenery changing or the person you say good night to. The traveler must be the one to change. That’s what makes the story good.

Hope can be a mighty powerful thing when you decide to tangle it into a journey. Hope can shake things up a bit. It’ll convince you that even if you don’t know what direction you’re headed in, something will meet you at the end.

All those dotted lines were just the parts of the story where she would get on the ground and get her hands dirty with the mess of it all. The mess and the glory of other people’s hearts and heart songs. She would learn it would take grit, and guts, and courage to make a difference. But the world will always need people who care enough to make a difference, so she needed to not miss her casting call.

It’s easier to let fear win. Even though love covers all things, fear is what keeps us silent and keeps words unsaid. Fear keeps us standing in one place. Eventually, when it wins, it means we never got the courage to say what we needed to say. But the words are needed. They won’t always fix things or mend things or make things better. They won’t bring someone back. They won’t stop a good-bye. They won’t be perfect. But they’ll be true. And maybe that is all we have ever needed from one another: true words written with a love that feels too big to pin down to a page with measly little syllables.

Somehow, you've found me. I have to believe there's a reason for that.

Pay more attention to the dotted lines, not just the destinations. The dotted lines are the silent, unspoken victories of this lifetime.

There is a sprawling beauty that exists inside the relationships where the one who is holding back finally finds the courage to mouth, "I'm all in.

It's in those spaces of no control that a brave life actually begins.

Don't always get so caught up in doing what you love. Instead, do what is necessary. Do what others need.

We could build entire cities out of the stories of loneliness.

That’s what I think about people in our lives with plane tickets—you’ve gotta let them go. Let them see what’s out there.

I think it’s easy to stay angry at a world that never promises you invincibility but still manages to break your heart with the way some moments can make you feel so infinite.

Because you deserve dignity, beyond anything else in this world. You deserve a God, and a faith, and a belief that finds you dignified at the core.

She didn't know if it was God. She wasn't really sure what to call it. She just knew she believe in unconditional love. And that was really all that mattered.

It was about some real belief that God wasn't just going to show up on Sunday and cop out by Tuesday morning.

I always thought New York City would be romantic, like a boyfriend who would kiss my hand and throw rocks at my window to get my attention.

I realize love—building it and making it last—is doing a lot of the things you don’t really feel like doing.

A life well lived is just a collection of small gestures and people you love the best you can and stories we tell back to one another when the moment has passed.

One day I will lend this heart of mine out -- like a well-read library book -- to someone who'll decide to rip the return date straight out of the inner binding and never let me go.

Some people are dotted lines and other people are destinations. Some people get you somewhere and some people are just a place to be, all in themselves. But you cannot force those dotted lines into destinations. It doesn’t really work that way.

It almost feels like at some point life whacks you on top of the head and hands you a list of all the things you can keep. The list is surprisingly long. You can keep letters. You can keep trying. You can keep secrets and you can try your hardest to keep promises. You can keep your eyes on the road. You can keep his sweatshirt, the one he left on the living room floor. You can keep photos and you can keep the memories. But you cannot keep people. People are not things - you can't keep them.

The two had very little figured out. They were trying though. They fell in love. They looked for God. They loved constructing miracles out of the mundane. Above all things, they cheered for each other. And they made each other stronger. And that meant everything.

I know you're worried about me. Not because you think I am incapable but because you secretly have always worried that life would go by without my ever learning how to stomp in the puddles or fall in love. I can promise you I'll learn. If anyone is a teacher for that kind of stuff, it has got to be New York.

But maybe that is why some people walk into your life—to tip you over and pour you out. Maybe some people storm into your life just to tell you they're not supposed to be there. That you can't take them or anyone with you wherever you're going next. Maybe not every person we encounter is a love story. Maybe some are wake-up calls.

If I could write an autobiography for fear, it would read like this: __________ Hi, my name is Fear. F-E-A-R. But you are going to call me a lot of other things as you start to get closer to me. I’m terribly unoriginal. I’m like every has-been out there, but you give me way more credit than I deserve. You should keep doing that. I like it when you make me bigger than I actually am. I’m going to make you feel alone, and I like it when you believe you’re the only one who’s ever felt this way. You think I’m custom-catered to fit you, but I’m really no different than the brand of me your best friend wears. I’m a ballad lurking in the hearts of a billion people, and I will do anything to keep you from realizing that I am just the same song on repeat. You all know all my words. I’m pretty jealous though. I want you alone with me at night. I’m not afraid to say I’m greedy or that I don’t want to share you. I’m a territorial lover, and I would rather you not have solid and deep conversations at dinner parties or find a community that doesn’t leave your side. I wrote you a story a long time ago, and I don’t want you to figure out that you’ve outgrown the plotline. I wonder why you don’t get over me sometimes, but then the realization hits me: You come back because you know I want you. You come back because you know the sound of my voice. You come back because you know the way I move and how I shut you down. You’ve stood face-to-face with me so many times and I have told you who you are. The crazy thing is, you’ve believed me.

I think something bigger is always happening, but it is never how we narrate it in our own head. It never is. We will meet people we never imagined in places we never planned to go. But it starts with a choice and then follows with a step. Make a choice. Take a step. Make a choice. Take a step. It’s a rhythm of life. You may not get your answer until you make the choice and take the step.

I learned vulnerability is a bit like those Russian nesting dolls, the ones that get smaller and smaller in size when you twist the top off and pull another one out. In the end, you’re left with the tiniest doll, that one nugget. No more layers to take off. Nothing left but a surprise, the surprise of finding out the littlest doll is the most solid of them all. It doesn’t hide inside of itself.

Because here's the thing about God and pain: He never plans to leave you just as you are. You're far too precious to him to not upgrade you, to swap parts of you for a new model. When you know stories about the dark, you become a light to others. You get to show the way. You get to sit on the floor with people or on the other end of the phone, not saying a word because you know words can't change the present pain. You get to help others just be, as you decide to just be with them.

And I was looking for escape routes all the time. Ways to not fully be there, to be distracted by other lives, the lives of people I knew from high school and college that were happening in different states and cities. I would waste hours comparing my life to theirs, sitting the two of them side by side and circling the things that seemed out of place in my own life, like the “What’s Wrong?” pictures in the back of the Highlights magazines. I don’t exactly know what happened that night after

I just remember thinking the stars were so reliable. I felt it as I drew my legs in close to my body and wrapped my arms around them; the stars are reliable, unlike any other thing in this crazy world. Leaves fall off the trees. Snow melts. Rain washes away all the things we wrote on the pavement. But the stars are relentless in shining. When it came to talking with God, I wanted to believe He was like those stars. If I looked, He’d be there. I’d lost a lot of things in the years that led up to this point—shoes and keys and books and boyfriends—but I never lost that hope.

I don't know what actually goes down in heaven, if heaven has a grand staircase or a theater where you get to see your impact in a "Crash" kind of cinematic adventure, but I do know our stories work that way--the imprints of ourselves we press into the palms of others have the power to be passed and passed through the hands of many. That the smallest things we do, never thinking twice about them, might be the very things that keep a person alive, and breathing, and standing on that day. I've stopped doubting that kind of impact because believing in it - believing in miracles in the mud of the mundane - gives you so much more purpose than not believing in it at all.

Grace is letting something else -- something so much bigger than you -- carry you home. It's having and wanting nowhere else to be but in a moment that wants you and takes you just as you are.

Some people are dotted lines and other people are destinations.

Just start off by telling me one true thing, and then another true thing, and then another. And soon enough, you'll have said everything you needed to say.

We have very little control over where our hearts choose to root themselves.

Not every person we encounter is a love story. Maybe some are wake-up calls.

Sometimes distance is just fear dressed in a poorly made ghost costume when you use it as an excuse not to be with someone.

I swim for brighter days, despite the absence of sun. Choking on salt water, I'm not giving in -- I swim.

We don't know how much we are capable of loving until the people we love are being taken away, until a beautiful story is ending.

By standing out, by actually being the people we say we want to be, we get to set ourselves free.

Life is a series of letting-go moments.

Hope can be a mighty powerful thing when you decide to tangle it into a journey. Hope can shake things up a bit. It'll convince you that even if you don't know which direction you're headed in, something will meet you in the end.

And New York City is details too... It's full of people who have no idea they're really just art to other passersby. There are probably thousands of them who head home feeling worthless, like failures, never fully knowing the impact they made on a complete stranger just by walking out to face the world that day. Never fully knowing they were the beautiful spot in someone else's ordinary day.

...we've never really been alone. Maybe lonely, but never alone.

The stars are reliable, unlike any other thing in this crazy world. Leaves fall off the trees. Snow melts. Rain washes away all the things we wrote on the pavement. But the stars are relentless in shining.

We've never really been alone. Maybe lonely, but never alone.

The worship had already begun. It was my favorite part about the whole thing. There was something electric about everyone lifting their hands up to the ceiling as if they were trying to pull things down from heaven. They reached and they reached and I couldn't help but wish I would find a reason to reach my hands up too.

And Jesus just acts like he's really annoyed with the guy and starts shooting back commandments. But right before he tells the man he needs to go and sell all his belongings to follow him, there's this really strange sentence. It's like it doesn't belong there. It's easy to miss. 'Jesus saw him and loved him.' The line was staring back at me through my screen. He saw him. And he loved him. Instantly. Like it was that easy. Like the man didn't need to do A, B, C, and D to just be loved. He was loved. He was seen. He was known. Already. He just had to show up and annoy Jesus. Showing up was all it took. And then being willing to let it all go.

Looking back, I wish that everyone could have that sort of moment: a moment where you realize that your hands are so impossibly small and this world is so impossibly big. And the two don't seem to add up. Maybe recognizing the smallness of your own hands is just the very first step to changing anything at all.

I know when I get real with myself, and I actually look at the world I’m growing up in, I want a savior. I’m sure of that. On most days I could not tell you what coffee I want, what train I want to take, or the jacket I want to wear, but I’ve always ached for a savior. The kind who gets right up close to your face and says, “Babycakes, this ain’t your battle. Stand back, I’m here now.

A lot of us might never reach the point of realizing that by standing out, by actually being the people we say we want to be, we get to set ourselves free. Not in all capacities, but definitely in some.

Don’t always get so caught up in doing what you love. Instead, do what is necessary. Do what others need.

They were the kind of words you read back and every lettered limb surprises you because you never knew you really felt those things the whole time.

Fear and failure, they go hand in hand. They’re like dance partners with great rhythm.

When it came to talking with God, I wanted to believe He was like those stars. If I looked, He’d be there. I’d lost a lot of things in the years that led up to this point—shoes and keys and books and boyfriends—but I never lost that hope.

It took loneliness to make the first couple of love letters come out of me, to realize something so much bigger than what I thought was just my own loneliness: we’ve never really been alone. Maybe lonely, but never alone.

It’s always in those moments when you’ve shunned God, or you’ve gone ahead as if you don’t need Him, that you find yourself crawling back with pathetic little attempts to get His attention because suddenly you’re weak and you need to convince yourself you’re not alone on the bathroom floor.