“Write so blazingly good that you can't be framed... Write like a motherfucker.” — 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
It's still true that literary works by women, gays, and writers of color are often framed as specific, rather than universal, small… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around… — 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
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
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
“The most fascinating thing to me about your letter is that buried beneath all the anxiety and sorrow and fear and self-loathing,… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
The most important thing for aspiring writers is for them to give themselves permission to be brave on the page, to write… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But… — 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
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
And if you're gonna be a writer, you just truly have to be a writer. You have to throw yourself into it… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
I write to find what I have to say. I edit to figure out how to say it right. — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
Writing is part intuition and part trial and error, but mostly it's very hard work. — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
With fiction, it could be about anything. It just has to be good writing, like Maria Semple's "Where'd You Go, Bernadette," which… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
“Writing is hard…Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine… — Cheryl Strayed Copy Share Image
“When you say you experience my writing as sacred, what you are touching is the divine place within me that is my… — 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
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
Looking back at my younger self, that I'm not so different than I am now. I was always a seeker. I wanted… — 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
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
Writing can be such a lonely endeavor that I do think community is also important.Meeting at cafes and exchanging work and reading… — 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
