Top 187 Quotes & Sayings by Richard Paul Evans

I'm a humble guy, okay?

Raising or caring for children requires sacrifice and service, which, I believe, heals us from the destructive forces of self-centeredness.

The idea of being a novelist is really romantic, but it's kind of the same as being president of the United States - it's not gonna happen.

I believe that love is the choice we make to raise ourselves and others to the highest planes of existence.

I have Tourettes syndrome.

So much of young adult literature has turned dark, almost pathological. It's almost as if there is a race to see who can be the most dysfunctional.

The concept of spiritual healing was something I was raised with.

I have a penchant for fresh notebooks and mechanical pencils. It seems every time I go to the store, I buy a new notebook. I have dozens of them just sitting around.

People are looking for inspiration, and my books are sometimes the vehicles of what people are looking for.

I find myself seeking out the commonalities of our different religious experiences with hopes of encouraging, through my writings, the most hopeful, loving and redemptive qualities in all of us.

At one time in my career, Barnes and Noble bookstores categorized my books as religious fiction.

Iwas not a reader at all, not until I discovered 'The Hobbit.' That changed my life. It gave me the courage to read. It led me to the 'Lord of the Rings' series. And once I'd read that, I knew I could read anything because I had just read thousands of pages.

I believe that we were meant to live as social creatures, to reach out and bless each other's lives.

I suppose I have an active imagination, and writing allows me to live it out.

Everyone has some inner power that awaits discovery.

Don't try to write what other people are writing - write what is true to you.

My grandfather, a devout Christian, had the gift of healing.

I absolutely love playing the game 'Risk.'

The kids who speak well, are articulate and intelligent, are all readers.

We are chained to that which we do not forgive

There are far too many people for us to think about each of them during our short stay on earth—like the thousands of books in a library we haven’t time to read in an afternoon. But this is no excuse to cease browsing. For every now and then, we find that one book that reaches us deep inside and introduces us to ourselves. And, in someone else’s story, we come to understand our own.

Regret is the most tiresome of companions.

Chocolate is God's apology for brocolli

Life is the soil, our choices and actions the sun and rain, but our dreams are the seeds.

Forgiveness does not require us to close our eyes but rather to truly open them.

Usually life’s greatest gifts come wrapped in adversity.

To choose the path is to choose the destination, but sometimes it seems that the path is under our feet even before we know we're walking.

If the errors of my life have profited me one great truth it is this: believe. Believe in your destiny and the star from which it shines. Believe you have been sent from God as an arrow pulled from his own bow. It is the single universal trait which the great of this earth have all shared, while the shadows are fraught with ghosts who roam the winds with mournful wails of regret on their lips. Believe as if your life depended upon it, for indeed it does.

The assumption of time is one of humanity's greatest follies. We tell ourselves that there's always tomorrow, when we can no more predict tomorrow than we can the weather. Procrastination is the thief of dreams.

Joy isn't the natural response to blessings - joy is what comes from acknowledging them.

I have learned a great truth of life. We do not succeed in spite of our challenges and difficulties, but rather, precisely because of them.

Without great mountains we cannot reach great heights.

Some people in this world have stopped looking for beauty, then wonder why their lives are so ugly. Don't be like them. The ability to appreciate beauty is of God. Especially in one another. Look for beauty in everyone you meet, and you'll find it. Everyone carries divinity within them. And everyone we meet has something to impart.

Feelings can be like wild animals-we underrate how fierce they are until we've opened their cage

Everyone who got to where they are had to begin where they were.

There are none so impoverished as those who do not acknowledge the abundance of their lives

Heroes rarely look the way we draw them in our minds: attractive, imposing figures with rippling muscles and strong chins. More times than not they are humble beings, small and flawed. It is only their spirits that are beautiful and strong.

The most difficult of decisions are often not the ones in which we cannot determine the correct course; rather the ones in which we are certain of the path but fear the journey.

Often times, the greatest peace comes of surrender.

What a culture we live in, we are swimming in an ocean of information, and drowning in ignorance.

It is in the darkest skies that stars are best seen.

From our first babblings to our last word, we make but one statement, and that is our life.

It is often during the worst of times that we see the best of humanity–awakening within the most ordinary of us that which is most sublime. I do not believe that it is circumstance that produces such greatness any more than it is the canvas that makes the artist. Adversity merely presents the surface on which we render our souls’ most exacting likeness. It is in the darkest skies that stars are best seen.

It's our memories that make us who we are. Without them, we're nothing. If that means we have to hurt sometimes, it's worth it.

We plan our lives in long, unbroken stretches that intersect our dreams the way highways connect the city dots on a road map. But in the end we learn that life is lived in the side roads, alleys, and detours.

Rarely do we invest the time to open the book of another's life. When we do, we are usually surprised to find its cover so misleading and its reviews so flawed.

I see people getting so caught up in celebrating diversity that they are neglecting their commonality. I don't see this as a good thing. The Chinese culture has survived for more than five thousand years in part because the Chinese have embraced the same language and culture. I hope I am wrong about this, and that the flame is still on beneath the great American melting pot. Americans need each other, and a house divided, no matter the color of its occupants, is still divided. And divided we all fall.

Some so fear the future that they suffocate the present. It's like committing suicide to avoid being murdered.

...for we are all amateurs at life, but if we do not focus too much on our mistakes, a miraculous picture emerges. And we learn that it's not the beauty of the image that warrants our gratitude--it's the chance to paint.

Sunsets, like childhood, are viewed with wonder not just because they are beautiful but because they are fleeting.

So often the pain of our life is no more than a reminder to take our hand off the stove.

The most important story we'll ever write in life is our own-not with ink, but with our daily choices.

Denial, perhaps, is a necessary human mechanism to cope with the heartaches of life.

Life is what happens to us while we're planning something else.

Those with the softest hearts build the hardest shells.

Everyone has problems. It's how you choose to deal with them. Some people choose to be whiners some choose to be winners. Some choose to be victims some choose to be victors.

There are people I've yet to meet who are waiting for my path to intersect with theirs, so they can complete their own journeys. I don't know who or where they are, but I know for certain that they are waiting.

I have come to believe that we do not walk alone in this life. There are others, fellow sojourners, whose journeys are interwoven with ours in seemingly random patterns, yet, in the end, have been carefully placed to reveal a remarkable tapestry. I believe God is the weaver at that loom.

It is better to be loved by one person who knows your soul than millions who don't even know your phone number.

There are two kinds of people. Those who climb mountains and those who sit in the shadow of the mountains and critique the climbers.