Shauna Niequist is the author of “Cold Tangerines” and “Bittersweet” and is well-known for her profound insights into everyday life.
Raised in Barrington, Illinois and educated in English and French literature at Westmont College, she explores themes such as friendship, family, faith, food, marriage, love and heartache in her writing.
Her narratives not only capture the beauty and brokenness of life but also reveal the heart of God.
Niequist is married to Aaron, a pianist, songwriter and worship leader, with whom she resides outside Chicago.
Together, they have two sons, Henry and Mac. Her words continue to touch and shape readers worldwide.
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Below ae some of the most amazing quotes by Shauna Niequist.
Top 10 Shauna Niequist Quotes
“If the home is a body, the table is the heart, the beating center, the sustainer of life and health.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“It’s from our souls that we love, that we feel, that we create, that we connect.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I’m learning that both body and soul require more tenderness and attentiveness than I had imagined.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I want to celebrate in the face of despair, dance when all we see on the horizon is doom.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“What powers our work when it’s no longer about addiction to achievement?” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Anyone who knew you as an adolescent and still wants to spend time with you is a true friend, and.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“You cannot taste the oil until you pour out the vinegar.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Stop. Right now. Remake your life from the inside out.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“My life is a story about who God is and what He does in a human heart.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Just because you have the capacity to do something doesn’t mean you have to do it.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
Inspiring Shauna Niequist Quotes
“There are times when the actual experience of leaving something makes you wish desperately that you could stay, and then there are times when the leaving reminds you a hundred times over why exactly you had to leave in the first place.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming. Don’t lose yourself at happy hour, but don’t lose yourself on the corporate ladder, either.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“We sometimes choose the most locked up, dark versions of the story, but what a good friend does is turn on the lights, open the window, and remind us that there are a whole lot of ways to tell the same story.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I’ve spent most of my life and most of my friendships holding my breath and hoping that when people get close enough they won’t leave, and fearing that it’s a matter of time before they figure me out and go.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I needed a piece of a story, something real and full of life and blood and breath and heartache, something that someone had lived through, a piece of wisdom earned the hard way. That’s why telling our stories is so important.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“When life is sweet, say thank you and celebrate. And when life is bitter, say thank you and grow.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“It’s not hard to decide what you want your life to be about. What’s hard, she said, is figuring out what you’re willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“When things fall apart, the broken pieces allow all sorts of things to enter, and one of them is the presence of God.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
Best Shauna Niequist Quotes
“Go back to being loved; go back to your purpose. This thing I am being asked to do will not get me more love. And this will not help me meet my purpose. Some.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Present over perfect living is real over image, connecting over comparing, meaning over mania, depth over artifice. Present over perfect living is the risky and revolutionary belief that the world God has created is beautiful and valuable on its own terms, and that it doesn’t need to be zhuzzed up and fancy in order to be wonderful. Sink.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“This is hospitality at its core. This is the beat of my heart: to experience grace and nourishment, and to offer it, one in each hand, to every person I meet – grace and nourishment. You can rest. You don’t have to starve.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Life is painful, and we carry with us so much disappointment and heartbreak. But I’m fighting to save some space inside me where I can create hope.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“And most important, I’ll choose to believe that sometimes the happiest ending isn’t the one you keep longing for, but something you absolutely cannot see from where you are.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Recipes are how we learn all the rules, and cooking is knowing how to break them to suit our tastes or preferences.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“My regrets: how many years I bruised people with my fragmented, anxious presence. How many moments of connection I missed – too busy, too tired, too frantic and strung out on the drug of efficiency.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“So now, out of desperation, I’m back to prayer. I’m back to prayer, sheepishly, because I couldn’t make my life work without it. I pray out of sheer lack of options.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I want businesses and government systems and certainly churches to be led more and more often by women. I believe that men and women would both benefit from it in dozens of ways. But if that’s going to happen, I think we have to declare a princess-free zone. No tiaras, no Girls Gone Wild, no pretending we can’t carry things. No fairytales, no waiting around to be rescued, and absolutely no playing dumb.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“It’s rebellious, in a way, to choose joy, to dance, to love your life. It’s much easier and much more common to be miserable. We could just live our normal, day-to-day lives, saving all the good living up for someday, but I think it’s our job to live each day like it’s a special occasion, because we’ve been given a gift.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Bless them. But don’t spend too much time with them. Draw close to people who honor your no, who cheer you on for telling the truth, who value your growth more than they value their own needs getting met or their own pathologies celebrated. Our.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
Famous Shauna Niequist Quotes
“Food and cooking are among the richest subjects in the world. Every day of our lives, they preoccupy, delight, and refresh us. Food is not just some fuel we need to get us going toward higher things. Cooking is not a drudgery we put up with in order to get the fuel delivered. Rather, each is a heart’s astonishment. Both stop us dead in our tracks with wonder. Even more, they sit us down evening after evening, and in the company that forms around.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Be very careful that you are not giving yourself to a pale imitation of life with Christ – life about Christ, or life generally near to Christ.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and look back and realize that the best thing about me was I was organized. That I executed well, that I ran a tight ship, that I never missed a detail.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Marriage isn’t a business, co-owned and managed. It’s a love story. The most important things we can give our marriage are time and romance, kissing and laughing. Laundry can wait, but a love story needs to be written a little bit every day. WHEN.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Thank you, God, for the things you heal, the things you redeem, the things you refuse to leave just as they have been for what seems like forever.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“But it isn’t about perfection, and it isn’t about performance. You’ll miss the richest moments in life – the sacred moments when we feel God’s grace and presence through the actual faces and hands of the people we love – if you’re too scared or too ashamed to open the door.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I know that life is busy and hard, and that there’s crushing pressure to just settle down and get a real job and khaki pants and a haircut. But don’t. Please don’t. Please keep believing that life can be better, brighter, broader, because of the art that you make.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Life with God at its core is about giving your life up to something bigger and more powerful. It’s about saying at every turn that God knows better than we know, and that his Spirit will lead us in ways that we couldn’t have predicted. I have known that, but I haven’t really lived that.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“But entertaining isn’t a sport or a competition. It’s an act of love, if you let it be. You can twist it and turn it into anything you want – a way to show off your house, a way to compete with your friends, a way to earn love and approval. Or you can decide that every time you open your door, it’s an act of love, not performance or competition or striving. You can decide that every time people gather around your table, your goal is nourishment, not neurotic proving. You can decide.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I’ve learned that in many cases, change is not a function of life’s cruelty but instead a function of God’s graciousness.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“The very thing that makes you you, that makes you great, that makes you different from everyone else is also the thing that, unchecked, will ruin you.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Food is a language of care, the thing we do when traditional language fails us, when we don’t know what to say, when there are no words to say.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“But this is what I’ve learned the hard way: what people think about you means nothing in comparison to what you believe about yourself.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“This is what I know: God can make something beautiful out of anything, out of darkness and trash and broken bones. He can shine light into even the blackest night, and he leaves glimpses of hope all around us. An oyster, a sliver of moon, one new bud on a black branch, a perfect tender shoot of asparagus, fighting up through the dirt for the spring sun. New life and new beauty are all around us, waiting to be discovered, waiting to be seen.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Life sneaks up on us every once in a while and gives us something we didn’t ever know we wanted, and lights within us a love we didn’t even know existed.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“It’s easy to be liked by strangers. It’s very hard to be loved and connected to the people in your home when you’re always bringing them your most exhausted self and resenting the fact that the scraps you’re giving them aren’t cutting it.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
Amazing Shauna Niequist Quotes
“There’s nothing small or inconsequential about our stories. There is, in fact, nothing bigger. And when we tell the truth about our lives – the broken parts, the secret parts, the beautiful parts – then the gospel comes to life, an actual story about redemption, instead of abstraction and theory and things you learn in Sunday school.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Because there really is nothing like good friends, like the sounds of their laughter and the tones of their voices and the things they teach us in the quietest, smallest moments.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“But what I eventually realized is that the return on investment was not what I’d imagined, and that the expectations were only greater and greater. When you devote yourself to being known as the most responsible person anyone knows, more and more people call on you to be that highly responsible person. That’s how it works. So the armload of things I was carrying became higher and higher, heavier and heavier, more and more precarious. At.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Bitter is what makes us strong, what forces us to push through, what helps us earn the lines on our faces and the calluses on our hands.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I don’t believe that God’s up in heaven making things go terribly wrong in our lives so that we learn better manners and better coping skills. But I do believe in something like composting for the soul: that if you can find life out of death, if you can use the smashed up garbage to bring about something new and good, however tiny, that’s one of the most beautiful things there is.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“And the best, most redeeming, exciting thing I can imagine, from the smashed-up, broken place I’ve been, is that something beautiful could blossom out of the wreckage… This is what I know: God can make something beautiful out of anything, out of darkness and trash and broken bones. He can shine light into even the blackest night, and he leaves glimpses of hope all around us.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I used to think that the ability to turn back time would be the greatest possible gift, so that I could undo all the things I wish I hadn’t done. But grace is an even better gift, because it allows me to do more than just erase; it allows me to become more than I was when I did those things. It’s forgiveness without forgetting, which is much sweeter than amnesia.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“This is what I’ve come to believe about change: it’s good, in the way that childbirth is good, and heartbreak is good, and failure is good. By that I mean that it’s incredibly painful, exponentially more so if you fight it, and also that it has the potential to open you up, to open life up, to deliver you right into the palm of God’s hand, which is where you wanted to be all along, except that you were too busy pushing and pulling your life into exactly what you thought it should be.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I fake-rested instead of real-rested, and then I found that I was real-tired. It feels ludicrous to be a grown woman, a mother, still learning how to rest. But here I am, baby-stepping to learn something kids know intuitively. Part of being an adult is taking responsibility for resting your body and your soul. And part of being an adult is learning to meet your own needs, because when it comes down to it, with a few exceptions, no one else is going to do it for you.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“In my rampant yes-yes-yes-ing, I said no, without intending to, to rest, to peace, to groundedness, to listening, to deep and slow connection, built over years instead of moments.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“You are more than dust and bones. You are spirit and power and image of God. And you have been given Today.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Love, though, doesn’t allow hiding. Love invites whole selves and whole stories out into the light. Friendship sees into us, into our secrets, into our elaborate games and excuses. Friendship carries all this mess together, so that you don’t have to hide, so that you carry it together. What a miracle!” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Many of us who have found ourselves to be useful in Christian service have found ourselves unable, if we’re honest, to connect with God any other way. We do for him, instead of being with him. We become soldiers, instead of brothers and sisters and daughters and sons. This is dangerous, damaging territory, and I’ve spent too much time there. These.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Many of the most deeply spiritual moments of my life haven’t happened just in my mind or in my soul. They happened while holding my son in the middle of the night, or watching the water break along the shore, or around my table, watching the people I love feel nourished in all sorts of ways.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Your pain doesn’t define you. Your failures don’t define you. Your createdness defines you. Christ in his goodness defines you”.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“What I’m finding is that when I’m hungry, lots of times what I really want more than food is an external voice to say, “You’ve done enough. It’s OK to be tired. You can take a break. I’ll take care of you. I see how hard you’re trying.” There is, though, no voice that can say that except the voice of God. The work I’m doing now is to let those words fall deeply on me, to give myself permission to be tired, to be weak, to need.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Now I know that the best thing I can offer to this world is not my force or energy, but a well-tended spirit, a wise and brave soul.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
Powerful Shauna Niequist Quotes
“WE LIVE out the love of God when we care for those he brings into our lives. Have you ever been surprised by who you came to love, because they became yours in some way?” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“When you do what you love with people who love the same thing, something is born into your midst and begins to connect you. When you walk with someone, listen to their story, carry their burden, play with their kids, that’s community. When you find yourself learning from them and inviting them into the family places in your life, that’s community, and wherever you find it, it’s always a gift.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I don’t see the kids and the car seats and all the ways we’ve changed. What I see is a girl who was wild about a boy, and a bot who loved that girl right back. And it makes me happy to know they’re still in there, still inside us, like Russian dolls.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Now I know that in the same way I’ve always believed God’s Spirit dwells deeply in this world, it also dwells deeply in me. I’ve known that, cognitively, but my life spoke otherwise. Now I know that the best thing I can offer to this world is not my force or energy, but a well-tended spirit, a wise and brave soul. My.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Let’s be courageous in these days. Let’s choose love and rest and grace. Let’s use our minutes and hours to create memories with the people we love instead of dragging them on one more errand or shushing them while we accomplish one more seemingly necessary thing.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Every year, you will trade a little of your perfect skin and your ability to look great without exercising for wisdom and peace and groundedness, and every year the trade will be worth it. I promise.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I believe in a very deep way that our past is what brings us to our future. When I pray for someone, I thank God for every day of their life, for every moment, for every heartbreak and each moment of happiness that has brought them to be this person at this time. I believe in mining through the darkest seasons in our lives and choosing to believe that we’ll find something important every time.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I don’t know if this is a season of sweetness or one of sadness. But I’m learning that neither last forever.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Good friendships are like breakfast. You think you’re too busy to eat breakfast, but then you find yourself exhausted and cranky halfway through the day, and discover that your attempt to save time totally backfired.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“What makes me feel alive and connected to God’s voice and spirit in this world is creating opportunities for the people I love to rest and connect and be fed at my table. I believe it’s the way I was made, and I believe it matters. For many years, I didn’t let it matter, for a whole constellation of reasons, but part of becoming yourself, in a deeply spiritual way, is finding the words to tell the truth about what it is you really love.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“It has come to me with a fight. It has come to me the hard way, through tears and fog and fear and chaos, and now has landed in the palm of my hand like a firefly. There now, I have had my vision.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Pleasing is such a fraught and freighted word, it seems, saccharine and over-sweet. Let’s do so much more than simply please people. Let’s see them and love them and delight them, look deeply into their eyes. Pleasing is shallow and temporary joy, not nearly as valuable or rich as seeing or connection or listening. Pleasing feels like corn syrup, like cheap candy, while pleasure is homemade pie, rich with butter, thick with sugar and ripe fruit.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I believe still today what I have always believed: that God is good, that the world he made is extraordinary, and that his comfort is like nothing else on earth.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I used to believe, in the deepest way, that there was something irreparably wrong with me. And love was a lie. Now I’m beginning to see that love is the truth and the darkness is a lie.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“As I look back, in many instances, I simply followed the natural course of things. And great things happened, mostly. But over time I realized they weren’t necessarily great things for me. They were maybe someone else’s great things, and I was both taking up the space that was meant for them and not standing in my own space, like wearing someone else’s shoes, leaving them barefoot.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
Top Shauna Niequist Quotes
“I needed to know who should get the best of my energy: my boys or a company that asked me to speak for them. I needed to know what matters. And the image of that man in his tuxedo was all I needed. You will always regret something. You will always disappoint someone. But it isn’t going to be my husband and our boys. It has been, sometimes. But I’m learning. And I’m making things right.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and look back and realize that the best thing about me was I was organized.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Sometimes it helps to get outside our problems and stick our fingers into someone else’s problems for a while.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I don’t make our bed in the morning, standing firm on the adolescent belief that there’s no sense in doing something you’re just going to undo at the end of the day.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Life hands us opportunities at every turn to get over ourselves, to get outside ourselves, to wake up from our own bad dreams and realize that really lovely things are happening all the time.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“It seems to me that one of the great hazards is quick love, which is actually charm. We get used to smiling, hugging, bantering, practicing good eye contact. And it’s easier then true, slow, awkward and painful connection with someone who sees all the worst parts of you. Your act is easy. Being with you, deeply with, is difficult.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“To pray is to say that there is more than I can see, and more than I can do. There is more going on than meets the eye.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“How we live matters, and what you choose to own will shape your life, whether you choose to admit it or not. Let’s live lightly, freely, courageously, surrounded only by what brings joy, simplicity, and beauty.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“God gives us something amazing when he gives us life, and I want to live with gratitude. I want to live in a way that shows how much I appreciate the gift.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I understand the temptation to draw an angry X through a whole season or a whole town or a whole relationship, to crumple it up and throw it away, to get it as far away as possible from a new life, a new future. But I think that’s both the easiest and the most cowardly choice. These days I’m walking over and retrieving those years from the trash, erasing the X, unlocking the door. It’s the only way that darkness turns to light.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“What people are craving isn’t perfection. People aren’t longing to be impressed; they’re longing to feel like they’re home. If you create a space full of love and character and creativity and soul, they’ll take off their shoes and curl up with gratitude and rest, no matter how small, no matter how undone, no matter how odd.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“People called me tough. And capable. And they said I was someone they could count on. Those are all nice things. Kind of. But they’re not the same as loving, or kind, or joyful. I was not those things. I.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Maybe it is God calling a big cosmic time out on me; giving me a chance at a new way of living. This is what I know. I have always been a more is more person and something shifted in me this summer. Something inside me said, “No more!” No more pushing and rushing. No more cold pizza at midnight. No more flights. No more books. No more house-guests. No more all of these things. Even things I love. Things I long for. Things that make me happy. No More. Only less. Less of everything.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Age, like numbers on a scale and letters on a report card, tells us very little of who we are. You decide every year exactly how young and how old you want to be.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I believe that suffering is part of the narrative, and that nothing really good gets built when everything’s easy. I believe that loss and emptiness and confusion often give way to new fullness and wisdom.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Some of the most life-shaping decisions you make in this season will be about walking away from good-enough, in search of can’t-live-without.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“You can use whatever term you want: besetting sin, shadow side, strength and weakness. The very thing that makes you you, that makes you great, that makes you different from everyone else is also the thing that, unchecked, will ruin you. For me, it’s lust for life. It’s energy, curiosity, hunger.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I didn’t ask you to become new and improved today. That wasn’t the goal. You were broken down and strange yesterday, and you still are today, and the only one freaked out about it is you.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“In my experience, you can never go wrong with flowers and food, even when someone insists that there’s nothing at all you can do.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
Popular Shauna Niequist Quotes
“Oh, the quiet moments alone with God I sacrificed in order to cross a few things off the to-do list I worshiped.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“OPPORTUNITIES TO build friendship and community don’t always come at the most convenient times, but we have to grab them when we get the chance.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I became the person people don’t want to tell they’re pregnant. I hate that. A friend told me her happy, fantastic news, and just a second later she burst out crying, afraid for how this would make me feel. I hate that. I work really hard to arrange my face in such a way that approximates uncomplicated glee. And I am happy for them, or course. But sometimes just after the happiness is the desperation. Some days are easier than others.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Try to keep your soul always in peace and quiet, always ready for whatever our Lord may wish to work in you. It is certainly a higher virtue of the soul, and a greater grace, to be able to enjoy the Lord in different times and different places than in only one. – Ignatius of Loyola.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Pride, for years, has told me that I am strong enough to drink from a firehose, and gluttony tells me it will all be so delicious. But those voices are liars. The glass of cool water is more lovely and sustaining than the firehose will ever be, and I’m starting to trust the voices of peace and simplicity more than pride and gluttony. They’re leading me well these days.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“He doesn’t tell the snow to that and become tain, or the rain to freeze itself into snow. He says, essentially: do your thing. Do the thing that you love to do, that you’ve been created to do.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“It’s so easy to think that because you can’t do something extraordinary, you can’t do anything at all. It’s easy to decide that if you can’t overhaul your entire life in one fell swoop, then you might as well just do nothing. We started where we could, with what we had. I hope it’s just the beginning for us.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“That’s why travel is so important, among other reasons: to get far enough away from our everyday lives to see those lives with new clarity. When you’re literally on the other side of the world, when you’re under the silent sea, watching a bright, silent world of fish and coral, when you’re staring up at a sky so bright and dense with stars it makes you gasp, it’s in those moments that you begin to see the fullness of your life, the possibility that still prevails, that always prevails.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Celebration when your plan is working? Anyone can do that. But when you realize that the story of your life could be told a thousand different ways, that you could tell it over and over as a tragedy, but you choose to call it an epic, that’s when you start to learn what celebration is. When what you see in front of you is so far outside of what you dreamed, but you have the belief, the boldness, the courage to call it beautiful instead of calling it wrong, that’s celebration.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“What God does in the tiny corners of our day-to-day lives is stunning and gorgeous and headline-making, but we have a bad habit of saving the headlines for the grotesque and scary.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Great art says the things we wished someone would say out loud, the things we wish we could say out loud.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“You have stories worth telling, memories worth remembering, dreams worth working toward, a body worth feeding, a soul worth tending, and beyond that, the God of the universe dwells within you, the true culmination of super and natural.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Please keep making art for people like me, people who need the magic and imagination and honesty of great art to make the day-to-day world a little more bearable.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I have a truly manic commitment to leftovers. I’ll eat the same thing eight meals in a row, just so it doesn’t go to waste.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“The problem is that the worldview I’ve chosen has melted like butter. I had a plan, and the plan is gone.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I’m not talking about cooking as performance, or entertaining as a complicated choreography of competition and showing off. I’m talking about feeding someone with honesty and intimacy and love, about making your home a place where people are fiercely protected, even if just for a few hours, from the crush and cruelty of the day.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
Wise Shauna Niequist Quotes
“God is present to me, possibly more so than ever because of my desperation, and the world he made nourishes me with its beauty and hope as much as it ever has. I believe still today what I have always believed: that God is good, that the world he made is extraordinary, and that his comfort is like nothing else on earth.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Many cooks and food writers have nothing but negative things to say about people who have dietary restrictions or preferences. Quite often it’s suggested that you just make what you want to make, and everyone can find something to eat, most likely. But if feeding people around your table is about connecting with them more than it is about showing off your menu or skills, isn’t it important to cook in such a way that their preferences or restrictions are honored?” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“The natural world is so breathtakingly beautiful. People are so weird and awesome and loving and life-giving. Why, then, did I try so hard for so long to get away without feeling or living deeply?” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I believe in mining through the darkest seasons in our lives and choosing to believe that we’ll find something important every time.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“It is better to be loved than admired. It is better to be truly known and seen and taken care of by a small tribe than adored by strangers who think they know you in a meaningful way.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“When you eat, I want you to think of God, of the holiness of hands that feed us, of the provision we are given every time we eat. When you eat bread and you drink wine, I want you to think about the body and the blood every time, not just when the bread and wine show up in church, but when they show up anywhere – on a picnic table or a hardwood floor or a beach.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“We have, each one of us, been entrusted with one life, made up of days and hours and minutes. We’re spending them according to our values, whether or not we admit it.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“In a thousand ways, you live by the sword and you die by the sword. When you allow other people to determine your best choices; when you allow yourself to be carried along by what other people think your life should be, could be, must be; when you hand them the pen and tell them to write your story, you don’t get the pen back. Not easily anyway. I.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Risotto is one of those dishes you just have to try a few times yourself, to teach yourself the moves and sounds and smells and textures. This is a guide map, but kind of a rough and tattered one.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Use what you have, use what the world gives you. Use the first day of fall: bright flame before winter’s deadness; harvest; orange, gold, amber; cool nights and the smell of fire. Our tree-lined streets are set ablaze, our kitchens filled with the smells of nostalgia: apples bubbling into sauce, roasting squash, cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, warmth itself. The leaves as they spark into wild color just before they die are the world’s oldest performance art, and everything we see is celebrating one last violently hued hurrah before the black and white silence of winter.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“This is actually my life, and it doesn’t matter a bit if it would be lovely for someone else to live. What does matter: does it feel congruent with how God made me and called me?” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I want to cultivate a deep sense of gratitude, of groundedness, of enough, even while I’m longing for something more. The longing and the gratitude, both. I’m practicing believing that God knows more than I know, that he sees what I can’t, that he’s weaving a future I can’t even imagine from where I sit this morning.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“The snow is only meant, created, commanded to fall. The rain is only meant, created, commanded to pour down. You were only meant, created, commanded to be who you are, weird and wonderful, imperfect and messy and lovely. What.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“We live in a world that values us for how fast we go, for how much we accomplish, for how much life we can pack into one day.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Food matters because it’s one of the things that forces us to live in this world – this tactile, physical, messy, and beautiful world – no matter how hard we try to escape into our minds and our ideals. Food is a reminder of our humanity, our fragility, our createdness.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
Thought-Provoking Shauna Niequist Quotes
“Nothing good comes easily. You have to lose things you thought you loved, give up things you thought you needed. You have to get over yourself, beyond your past, out from under the weight of your future. The good stuff never comes when things are easy. It comes just when you think it never will.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Now is your time. Become, believe, try. Walk closely with people you love, and with other people who believe that God is very good and life is a grand adventure. Don’t spend time with people who make you feel like less than you are. Don’t get stuck in the past, and don’t try to fast-forward yourself into a future you haven’t yet earned. Give today all the love and intensity and courage you can, and keep traveling honestly along life’s path.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“When you travel, and when you read, you are not actually alone, but rather surrounded by other worlds entirely, the footsteps and phrases of whole other lives keeping you company as you go.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“The world will tell you how to live, if you let it. Don’t let it. Take up your space. Raise your voice. Sing your song. This is your chance to make or remake a life that thrills you.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“It’s sloppy theology to think that all suffering is good for us, or that it’s a result of sin. All suffering can be used for good, over time, after mourning and healing, by God’s graciousness. But sometimes it’s just plain loss, not because you needed to grow, not because life or God or anything is teaching you any kind of lesson. The trick is knowing the difference between the two.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“But you can’t have yes without no. Another way to say it: if you’re not careful with your yeses, you start to say no to some very important things without even realizing it. In my rampant yes-yes-yes-ing, I said no, without intending to, to rest, to peace, to groundedness, to listening, to deep and slow connection, built over years instead of moments. All.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Brave doesn’t always involve grand gestures, sometimes brave looks like staying when you want to leave, telling the truth when all you want to do is change the subject… sometimes brave looks like boring, and thats totally, absolutely, okay.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“TRAVEL BREATHES new life into our sense of what is possible, and allows us to see our lives from a new perspective. When was the last time a new location opened up something new in you?” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Present is living with your feet firmly grounded in reality, pale and uncertain as it may seem. Present is choosing to believe that your own life is worth investing deeply in, instead of waiting for some rare miracle or fairytale. Present means we understand that the here and now is sacred, sacramental, threaded through with divinity even in its plainness. Especially in its plainness.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“As a host, you set the tone, and you set it right away. It’s so easy to get carried away with an ambitious menu, and then spend the whole night flinging things around your kitchen and being annoyed with your guests for having the audacity to try to talk with you. Terrible plan. Everyone would rather have a simpler meal and a happier host.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“When I’ve regretting saying something on the internet, it’s never been about love. I’ve never regretting loving or encouraging or celebrating something. I have often regretted slamming or dismissing or criticizing something, because when I do that online, it’s outside of relationship, outside of shared understanding, outside of context. I.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“For some of us, the addiction to motion is so deep, so pervasive, that only dramatic gestures are enough to take hold.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
Great Shauna Niequist Quotes
“The general world population will survive without one more stage production and one more gallery showing. This is the thing, though: you might not. We create because we were made to create, having been made in the image of God, whose first role was Creator.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“I wanted, of course, for this bittersweet season to be over. I felt so strongly that when I finished the book, I’d be free to move into another season, one of life and celebration. But this is what I know now: they’re the same thing, and that’s all there is.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“We decide where the time goes. There’s so much freedom in that, and so much responsibility.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“And also that God’s will has a lot more to do with inviting us to become more than we previously have been than about getting us to one very specific destination. God’s will, should we choose to engage in it, will generally feel like surgery, rooting out all the darkness and fear we’ve come to live with.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Part of the magic of the lake is that it isn’t home – it’s away, and away allows us to see the rhythms and dimensions of our lives more clearly. So it doesn’t necessarily work for us to live here at the lake, but I do want the way of living that I’ve tasted here to inform and ground how I live everywhere, all year long. The lake gives me something to aspire to – a reminder, a rhythm, a pattern. Simple, connected to God and His world and people, uncomplicated by lots of stuff.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“And that’s the core of prayer: admitting that just maybe, there’s something going on that we can’t see. So when I’m afraid, I pray, and I ask for God’s help, that I will be able to see something I wasn’t able to see before, or at least trust him to do the seeing.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“But our goal, remember, is to feed around our table the people we love. We’re not chefs or restaurateurs or culinary school graduates, and we shouldn’t try to be. Make it the way the people you love want to eat it.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“Share your life with the people you love, even if it means saving up for a ticket and going without a few things for a while to make it work. There are enough long lonely days of the same old thing, and if you let enough years pass, and if you let the routine steamroll your life, you’ll wake up one day, isolated and weary, and wonder what happened to all those old friends. You’ll wonder why all you share is Christmas cards, and why life feels lonely and bone-dry.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
“My impulse is always toward work, pushing, guilt, rushing. But what restores me, what allows me to interact well with my family, what allows me to get good writing done, is almost always the opposite. And I’m finding that when I practice things like rest, grace, peace, prayer, self-care and slowness, the work gets done just the same. Well, just the same except less crying and less apologizing to my family. I’ll take it.” ~ (Shauna Niequist).
Also Read:
- Rich Dad Poor Dad Quotes
- Start with Why Quotes
- Watchman Nee Quotes
- Cinderella Quotes
- Mary Oliver Quotes
- Ravi Zacharias Quotes
- Stuart Wilde Quotes
Short Biography of Shauna Niequist
Shauna Niequist, a bestselling author known for works like “Cold Tangerines” and “Bittersweet,” explores life’s highs and lows through her writing.
From Barrington, Illinois, she studied literature and now lives just outside Chicago with her husband Aaron, a pianist, and their sons, Henry and Mac.
Aaron contributes to their artistic household by leading worship at Willow Creek Community Church and working on a music project.
| Full Name | Shauna Niequist |
| Born | 1976 (age 48 years), Barrington, Illinois, United States |
| Website | shaunaniequist.com |
| Spouse | Aaron Niequist |
| Parents | Bill Hybels, Lynne Hybels |
| Siblings | Todd Hybels |
| Occupation | Novelist |
Together, they navigate the beauty and challenges of life, capturing the essence of human experience and divine encounters in everyday moments.
Quick Facts about Shauna Niequist
- Shauna Niequist is a novelist known for works like “Bread and Wine” and “Cold Tangerines.”
- She was born on August 17, 1976, in Barrington, Illinois.
- Shauna has over 140,000 followers on Instagram.
- She’s been recognized by Oprah for her writing.
- Niequist’s zodiac sign is Leo.
- Her birth flowers are Gladiolus and Poppy.
- Shauna studied English and French literature at Westmont College.
- Her parents are Bill and Lynne Hybels.
- She’s married to Aaron Niequist.
- The couple has two sons, Henry and William.
- They live in New York City.
- Shauna’s net worth is estimated to be between $1 million and $5 million.
- She’s a New York Times bestselling author.
- Her book titles include “I Guess I Haven’t Learned That Yet” and “Present Over Perfect.”
- Shauna is passionate about gathering people, especially for meals.
- She writes about life’s beautiful and broken moments.
- Topics she covers include family, faith, and friendship.
- Aaron, her husband, is a pianist, songwriter, and worship leader.
- Her husband works at Willow Creek Community Church.
- The Niequist family resides outside Chicago.
- Shauna’s writing explores themes like love, marriage, and celebration.
- She also delves into challenges like heartache and loss.
- Her work reveals insights into the nature of God.
- Shauna is a book lover and enjoys discussing literature.
- She values the role of food in bringing people together.
- Shauna’s storytelling reflects on everyday experiences.
- She emphasizes the importance of presence and simplicity in her book “Present Over Perfect.”
- Her writing is known for its authenticity and relatability.
- Shauna Niequist is a voice for finding beauty in the ordinary moments of life.
Top Questions about Shauna Niequist
A: Shauna Niequist is famous for being a successful Novelist.
A: August 17, 1976.
A: Westmont College.
A: More than 140,000 followers.
A: Bread and Wine and Cold Tangerines.
A: New York City.
A: Henry and William.
A: Aaron Niequist.
A: Everyday life’s beautiful and broken moments, including friendship, family, faith, food, and more.
A: Barrington, Illinois.
A: English and French literature.
A: Between $1 Million and $5 Million dollars.
A: Worship leader.
A: Oprah.
A: Leo.
