So release yourself from that. Don't be strategic or coy. Strategic and coy are for jackasses. Be brave. Be authentic. Practice saying… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
I think being a woman alone enhanced the impulse in others to be generous. What we're told is that to be a… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
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.… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
A lot of people go off and have fun adventures, or hard adventures, and their impulse is to write about them right… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
On my hike my brain was left to wander. That was often maddening because it was tedious and monotonous sometimes, but then… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
Of course some people manage to write books really young and publish really young. But for most writers, it takes several years… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
I hope when people ask what you're going to do with your English degree and/or creative writing degree you'll say: Continue my… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks.… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
I think the first thing - if you want to be a writer - the first thing you need to do is… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
A lot of artists give up because it's just too damn hard to go on making art in a culture that by… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naïve pomposity. Many people you believe to be rich… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
We love and care for oodles of people, but only a few of them, if they died, would make us believe we… — 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… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
You have to pay your own electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you got. You… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
If someone is being unkind or petty or jealous or distant or weird, you don't have to take it in. You don't… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
I actually don't have any fear of people reading Wild and going out unprepared. Because one of the best things that ever… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
I grew up in northern Minnesota on 40 acres of wooded land 20 miles from the nearest town, and so the wilderness… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
No' is golden. 'No' is the kind of power the good witch wields. It's the way whole, healthy, emotionally evolved people manage… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
People do support themselves as artists and writers, so there's no need to be all doom and gloom about it. You just… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
Being so alone and so silent for so long gave me the opportunity to see how our brains actually work. I think… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
The people who don’t give up are the people who find a way to believe in abundance rather than scarcity. — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
Writing is such a strangely and radically private act, and yet its purpose is this great sense of connection and community. I… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
I think a lot of people have the idea of an editor being someone who comes in like a dictator, and says,… — 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
“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
