Quotes from Cheryl Strayed

Love many, trust few, and always paddle your own canoe.

You're here. So be here, dear one. You're okay with us for now.

That mystery is not the curse of our existence; it's the wonder. It's what people are talking about when they talk about the circle of life that we're all part of whether we sign up to be or not—the living, the dead, those being born right this moment, and the others who are fading out.

I never believed the boys were angry. I believed they were hurt and anger was the safest manifestation of their sorrow. It was the channel down which their impotent male rivers could rage.

Many people you believe to be rich are not rich. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering.

she told me that she was grateful for him because without him she wouldn't have had my siblings and me.

I suggest you forget about forgiveness for now and strive for acceptance instead.

I always ask my students to answer two questions about the work they and their peers have written: What happened in this story? and What is this story about?

Your behavior and words will deeply impact your child's life—both how he or she feels about his or her father and also how he or she feels about him or herself.

she had to be her best self more often than it's reasonable for any human to be. And you know what's so never-endingly beautiful to me? She was. She was imperfect. She made mistakes. But she was her best self more often than it's reasonable for any human to be.

THE RECKONING Dear Sugar, I am the lucky mama of one darling baby and oh, how I treasure every moment! Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how you look at it—the baby's daddy does not follow suit on treasuring every moment.

It's a useful way to see what's there. A lot of times, it isn't much.

You loathe yourself, and yet you're consumed by the grandiose ideas you have about your own importance. You're up too high and down too low. Neither is the place where we get any work done.

Or rather, it's a bunch of what happened that ends up being about nothing at all.

In this sense, Tiny Beautiful Things can be read as a kind of ad hoc memoir. But it's a memoir with an agenda. With great patience, and eloquence, she assures her readers that within the chaos of our shame and disappointment and rage there is meaning, and within that meaning is the possibility of rescue.

Nobody's going to do your life for you. You have to do it yourself, whether you're rich or poor, out of money or raking it in, the beneficiary of ridiculous fortune or terrible injustice. And you have to do it no matter what is true. No matter what is hard. No matter what unjust, sad, sucky things have befallen you.

You must do everything you can to get what you want and need, to find "that type of love." It's there for you. I know it's arrogant of me to say so, because what the hell do I know about looking like a monster or a beast? Not a thing. But I do know that we are here, all of us—beasts and monsters and beauties and wallflowers alike—to do the best we can. And every last one of us can do better than give up.

It's what most of us have to give a few times over the course of our lives: to love with a mindfully clear sense of purpose, even when it feels outrageous to do so. Even when you'd rather put on your steel-toed boots and scream. Give it. You won't regret it. It will come out in the reckoning.

I learned then what I have learned in many other ways over the course of my life: that when we're in the presence of someone else's pain, the burden of not-doing is so much greater than the burden of doing. Doing lifts the burden. Even if it's a small thing. Like writing a letter.

Yo era quien era: la misma mujer que palpitaba bajo el moretón de su antigua vida; solo que ahora estaba en otro sitio.

Quizá sí estaba más sola que nadie en el mundo. Quizás eso no estaba mal.

You aren't afraid of love. You're afraid of all the junk you've yoked to love. And you've convinced yourself that withholding one tiny word from the woman you think you love will shield you from that junk.

When it comes to our children, we do not have the luxury of despair. If we rise, they will rise with us every time, no matter how many times we've fallen before. I hope you will remember that the next time you fail.

Not regretting it later is the reason I've done at least three-quarters of the best things in my life.