Quotes about Tension

As a Southerner, coming of age for me included a dawning awareness that we were living with a story that was self-deceiving, a lie. The resulting tension planted something deep in my soul, a nagging sense of betrayal.

The Arab world has no peer when it comes to hatred - of the Western world generally, and especially of Israel. Israel-hatred and its twin, Jew-hatred, are the oxygen that the Arab world breathes.

A life filled with tension can be a deeply happy one. A life filled with aggravation or stress cannot.

My mom's whole side of the family, they're all Packers fans. My mom's a Bears fan. My stepdad is a Vikings guy. So that gets ugly. My mom sits upstairs watching the Bears game; he sits in the basement. They can't watch it together. Football's a violent anger in our family dynamic.

The heart responds to the conflict within a story.

Most of us struggle with the opposite. We don't bring up the negative stakes enough and so the story we're telling falls flat. Remember, if there are no stakes, there is no story.

And stories are all about conflict.

God allows us to face the tension whether we like it or not.

A story doesn't really pick up until the hero needs to disarm a bomb, win someone's heart, defeat a villain, or fight for their emotional or physical survival.

Democracy is a constant tension between truth and half-truth and, in the arsenal of truth, there is no greater weapon than fact.

The tension exists because you are doing the difficult work of no longer cooperating with dysfunction.

Over the years I've grown more comfortable with making people uncomfortable because that is when growth can happen. You need a little conflict. You need a little tension. And that is part of my calling. A little tough love goes a long way!