Quotes from Charles Martin

That's life. You take the bad with the good. Rise up through it. Live in the midst of it. It's the bad that lets you know how good the good really is. Don't let the bad leave you thinking like there ain't no good. There is, and lots of it, too.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a host of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus.

Rightly or wrongly, I want you to spend your life making music where the angels sing along. Being a reflection. I think that'd be a life well spent. I failed to say that before now, and for that I'm sorry. If I may offer one excuse - I've never raised a son before. Please allow a few mistakes. I'm figuring this out as we go.

Story is the bandage of the broken. The tapestry upon which we write our lives." "Stories Birth our dreams and feed the one thing that never dies.

No gone is too far gone.

You can say whatever you want about something, but that doesn't change what it is." He

When you boil it down," he said, holding out his hand and counting with his fingers, "all we got left, all anybody's got, is faith . . . and hope . . . and love." He looked at his three fingers. "And we all gonna make it. All three of us.

Sometimes we have to sing through the scars. Sometimes a song is the only thing that heals the broken places in us. Only thing that breaks the chains on the heart.

forgiveness offered—especially when so undeserved—cuts chains off the human heart that no other power in any universe anywhere can rattle much less break.

And just as we desperately need it from Jesus, there are people who, whether they know it or not, need that gift from us.

life is either a daring adventure, or it is nothing.

Writes over the old memories. Makes beauty out of pain. Love writes what can be.

Truth is, our hardship does not determine His character or His love for us, and it doesn't make Him any less King or any less capable or any less good or any less in love with us. The choice is ours.

It is a flower that sprouts and grows when others pour water upon it. I think sometimes that I spent so much time worrying about how to protect and strengthen the flower—even going so far as to graft in a new stem and root system—that I forgot to simply water it.

That old man's guitar had lost its voice. It was played out. So was he. But while his mind might have forgotten more music than most would ever know, his fingers had not. Where most folks saw an itinerant drunk, I tasted the residue of musical genius. At one time, this guy had been somebody.

the Father has yet to leave His post. His eyes still scan the horizon. And no darkness, no matter how dark, can hide the prodigal. Job said it this way: 'For He [the Father] looks to the ends of the earth, and sees under the whole heavens.

The Father is about total restoration. A complete returning to son-ship. An heir with all rights and privileges thereof. Maybe you're the prodigal. Surrounded by pigs and staring at the pods. Let me say this to you--I don't care what you've done, where you've gone, where you are, or who you've become, the truth is this: the sanctifying, redeeming, justifying, snatching-back-out-of-the-hand-of-the-devil blood of Jesus reaches to the far ends of the earth.

A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.

If your knuckles are bloodier than your knees, then you're fighting the wrong battle.

Proving once again that writing is an amazing transaction, and that the most powerful thing ever is a word.

That which we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence." At the time I had not read Wittgenstein

Used to tell me that people spend money on three things: what they love, what they worship, and what helps ease their pain.

She smiled, tilted her head, and . . . have you ever seen video of melting glaciers where huge chunks, the size of skyscrapers, break off and crash into the sea? If hearts can do that, then when her hair slid from behind her ear and down over her eyes, and the right side of her lip turned up, I heard my heart crack down the middle.

the kid was leaning against the window.