Frederick Buechner is an American writer, novelist, poet, autobiographer, essayist, preacher, and theologian. He is the author of more than thirty published books. His work encompasses different genres, including fiction, autobiography, essays and sermons, and his career has spanned six decades. Buechner’s books have been translated into many languages for publication around the world. He is best known for his novels, including A Long Day’s Dying, The Book of Bebb, Godric (a finalist for the 1981 Pulitzer Prize), and Brendan, his memoirs, including Telling Secrets and The Sacred Journey, and his more theological works, including Secrets in the Dark, The Magnificent Defeat, and Telling the Truth. He has been called ‘Major talent’ and ‘a very good writer indeed’ by the New York Times, and ‘one of our most original storytellers’ by USA Today. Annie Dillard (Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek) says: ‘Frederick Buechner is one of our finest writers.’ Buechner was also a finalist for the National Book Award presented by the National Book Foundation and the Pulitzer Prize, and has been awarded eight honorary degrees from such institutions as Yale University and the Virginia Theological Seminary. In addition, Buechner has been the recipient of the O. Henry Award, the Rosenthal Award, the Christianity and Literature Belles Lettres Prize, and has been recognized by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. May his quotes inspire you to take action so that you may live your dreams.
1. “Listen. Your life is happening. You are happening. Think back on your journey.” Frederick Buechner
2. “Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves. Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure, but clean enough for another day’s chalking.” Frederick Buechner
3. “Pay mind to your own life, your own health, and wholeness. A bleeding heart is of no help to anyone if it bleeds to death.” Frederick Buechner
4. “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” Frederick Buechner
5. “The pride that keeps us from forgiving is the same pride which keeps us from accepting forgiveness.” Frederick Buechner
6. “Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.” Frederick Buechner
7. “Beneath our clothes, our reputations, our pretentions, beneath our religion or lack of it, we are all vulnerable both to the storm without and to the storm within.” Frederick Buechner
8. “Wherever people love each other and are true to each other and take risks for each other. God is with them.” Frederick Buechner
9. “The trouble with really seeing and really hearing is that then we really have to do something about what we have seen and heard.” Frederick Buechner
10. “To find our calling is to find the intersection between our own deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger.” Frederick Buechner
11. “Everybody prays whether you think of it as praying or not. The odd silence you fall into when something very beautiful is happening or something very good or very bad.” Frederick Buechner
12. “A miracle is when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A miracle is when one plus one equals a thousand. ” Frederick Buechner
13. You do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.” Frederick Buechner
14. “Justice is the grammar of things. Mercy is the poetry of things.” Frederick Buechner
15. “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments and life itself is grace.” Frederick Buechner
16. “Maybe the truth of it is that it’s too good not to be true.” Frederick Buechner
17. “You are loved.” Frederick Buechner
18. “If it seems a childish thing to do, do it in remembrance that you are a child.” Frederick Buechner
19. “Doubts are the ants in the pants in faith. They keep it awake and moving.” Frederick Buechner
20. “If there is anything in this world I believe, it is that God is indeed doing all kinds of things in the lives of all of us.” Frederick Buechner
21. “The power of stories is that they are telling us that life adds us somehow, that life itself is like a story.” Frederick Buechner
22. “Lust is the craving of salt of a man who is dying of thirst.” Frederick Buechner
23. “I find I need to put things into words before I can believe that they are entirely real.” Frederick Buechner
24. “Faith is not being sure where you’re going but going anyway.” Frederick Buechner
25. “My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours.” Frederick Buechner
26. “Be kind.” Frederick Buechner
27. “Listen to your life. All moments are key moments.” Frederick Buechner
28. “Thus, when you wake up in the morning, called by God to be a self again, if you want to know who you are, watch your feet. Because where your feet take you, that is who you are.” Frederick Buechner
29. “To be wise is to be eternally curious.” Frederick Buechner
30. “Go where your best prayers take you.” Frederick Buechner
31. “The more you give, the more you are.” Frederick Buechner
32. “Faith is stepping out into the unknown with nothing to guide us but a hand just beyond our grasp.” Frederick Buechner
33. “The sacred moments, the moments of miracle, are often the everyday moments.” Frederick Buechner
34. “The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.” Frederick Buechner
35. “One life on this earth is all that we get. Whether it is enough or not enough. And the obvious conclusion would seem to be that at the very least we are fools if we do not live it as fully and bravely and beautifully as we can.” Frederick Buechner
