Cheryl Strayed Quotes

I’ve learned so much as both a writer and a human.

It was my life — like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me. How wild it was, to let it be.

I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.

Run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.

What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn’t have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?

My whole life sort of ended when my mom died.

Writing is part intuition and part trial and error, but mostly it’s very hard work.

Once I was in a cafe in Portland and the woman at the next table and I began chatting and in the course of our conversation she strongly recommend I visit this web site called ‘The Rumpus’ so I could read this advice column called ‘Dear Sugar.’ It was so painful not to tell her that in fact I was Sugar, but I didn’t.

Uncertain as I was as I pushed forward. I felt right in my pushing, as if the effort itself meant something.

The father’s job is to teach his children how to be warriors, to give them the confidence to get on the horse to ride into battle when it’s necessary to do so. If you don’t get that from your father, you have to teach yourself.

I had problems a therapist couldn’t solve; grief that no man in a room could ameliorate.

I’d finally come to understand what it had been: a yearning for a way out, when actually what I had wanted to find was a way in.

Love is our essential nutrient. Without it, life has little meaning. It’s the best thing we have to give and the most valuable thing we receive. It’s worthy of all the hullabaloo.

My concept of an advice giver had been a therapist or a know-it-all, and then I realized nobody listens to the know-it-alls. You turn to the people you know, the friend who has been in the thick of it or messed up – and I’m that person for sure.

My mom said there’s a sunrise and a sunset every day and you can choose to be there or not. You can put yourself in the way of beauty.

The only way out of a hole is to climb out.

The place of true healing is a fierce place. It’s a giant place. it’s a place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmering light.