'A Million Miles in a Thousand Years'

I am sure this book is going to be fantastic. Donald Miller always is. But when I read the pre-released chapter {both the version that is in the new release of BLJ and the copy on his website}, I realized that I will be forced to reconsider everything again. Some particularly thoughful excerpts:

"If you ask me, the people who get the most out of life are the ones who don’t ask questions. I wish I was this kind of person. I was at Crème the other morning and heard a girl tell another girl about her previous night’s date and I kept wondering how she could go on about her date without knowing what love is for and what it means. I kept wondering how she could be excited about something when there was no philosophical map that would tell her where she was going and whether or not arriving there would give her a sense of closure and fulfillment. And there is a man who delivers library books to the library downstairs and the other day when he was carrying cartons of books into the library I wondered if he ever got tempted to drive the truck off the Sellwood bridge because he knew it was filled with a million ideas that contradicted each other. There are times when I think an act like that might be righteous. But I don’t know why."

---

Robert McKee put his coffee cup down and leaned onto the podium. He put his hand on his forehead and wiped his grey hair back. He said you have to go there, you know. You have to take your character to the place where they just can’t take it anymore. He looked at us with a tenderness we hadn’t seen in him before. You’ve been there, haven’t you? You’ve been out on the ledge. The marriage is over now, the dream is over now, nothing good can come from this. He got louder. Writing a story isn’t about making your peaceful fantasies come true. The whole point of the story is the character arc. You didn’t think joy could change a person, did you? Joy is what you feel when the conflict is over. But it’s conflict that changes a person. He was shouting now. You put your characters through hell. You put them through hell. That’s the only way we change.

I am going to think about this now, and come up with something witty and brilliant to say about it tomorrow.