I write to find what I have to say. I edit to figure out how to say it right. — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true. — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
“...but thinking about it didn't do a thing. Thinking about it was a long dive into a bucket of shit that didn't… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
Healing is a small and ordinary and very burnt thing. And it's one thing and one thing only: it's doing what you… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
The universe, I'd learned, was never, ever kidding. It would take whatever it wanted and it would never give it back. — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
“I knew that if I allowed fear to over take me, my journey was doomed.” — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
I set my toothbrush down, then leaned into the mirror and stared into my own eyes. I could feel myself disintegrating inside… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
“Very nice," said Rick after a while. "Very nice," he repeated, with more emphasis the second time. "What is?" I asked, turning… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
The complicated thing about friends is that sometimes they are totally wrong about us and sometimes they are totally right and it's… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
It seemed to me the way it must feel to people who cut themselves on purpose. Not pretty, but clean. Not good,… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren't a state of being, but rather a room… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was what also had got me here?… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
I never got to be in the driver's seat of my own life," she'd wept to me once, in the days after… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
“I will never go home, I thought with a finality that made me catch my breath, and then I walked on, my… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
It's hard to go. It's scary and lonely...and half the time you'll be wondering why the hell you're in Cincinnati or Austin… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
When I woke the next morning in my room at White's Motel, I showered and stood naked in front of the mirror,… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
“I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
He kissed me hard and I kissed him back harder, like it was the end of an era that had lasted all… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
“She understands that attention is the first and final act of love, and that the ultimate dwindling resource in the human arrangement isn’t cheap… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share
“The most terrible and beautiful and interesting things happen in life. For some of you, those things have already happened. Whatever happens to you… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share
Of course you want someone special to love you. A majority of the people who write to me inquire about how they can get… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share
It's still true that literary works by women, gays, and writers of color are often framed as specific, rather than universal, small rather than… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share
“Don’t listen to those people who suggest you should be “over” your daughter’s death by now. The people who squawk the loudest about such… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share
“. . . there was the actual doing it, quickly followed by the grim realization of what it meant to do it, followed by… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share
He was the most ordinary man in all the world, and yet in her memory he'd become luminous, like the prince in a fairy… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share
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… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share
“I never believed the boys were angry. I believed they were hurt and anger was the safest manifestation of their sorrow. It was the… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share
“It’s wrong that this is required of you. It’s wrong that your son died. It will always be wrong.” — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share
“Your ultimatum is simple. It’s fair. And it’s stating your own intentions, not what you hope theirs will be.” — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share
“We aren't poor," my mother said, again and again. "Because we're rich in love.” — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share
