I'll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was,… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
I'd walk and think about my entire life. I'd find my strength again, far from everything that had made my life ridiculous. — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
“To know that seeing the fish beneath the surface of the water was enough. That it was everything. It was my life--… — 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
It was my life — like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
Nobody's going to do your life for you. You have to do it yourself, whether you're rich or poor, out of money… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
The only way I've been able to stay informed without letting fury rule my life is to channel my rage into something… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life.… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
“Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life.… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
“Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very height of my youthful arrogance.… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
The writing life doesn't move in a straight line. I've had successes and rejections all along the way, at every stage of… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
My mother saved hundreds of animals in her life. Wherever she encountered and injured or needy or abandoned animal, she brought it… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
“That job and the fifteen others I had before I graduated college were my own, personal “educational opportunities.” They changed my life… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
“You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don’t have… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
“They made my life big. They contributed to an education that money can’t buy.” — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
“That mystery is not the curse of our existence; it’s the wonder. It’s what people are talking about when they talk about… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
“Nobody’s going to do your life for you. You have to do it yourself, whether you’re rich or poor, out of money… — 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
“There was the woman I was before my mom died and the one I was now, my old life sitting on the… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
I had to change. I had to change was the thought that drove me in those months of planning. Not into a… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
“It hadn't occurred to me that my mother would die. Until she was dying, the thought had never entered my mind. She… — 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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“And you have to do it no matter what is true. No matter what is hard.” — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“. . . 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
