Quotes from Cheryl Strayed

If you continue using avoidance as the main tactic in your romantic relationships with women, you're going to stunt not only your happiness, but your life.

I choose to love this time for once with all my intelligence

she said things I already knew but needed to hear again. How in darkness, we are waiting. How it is in the times that we must search hardest for the light that we are most profoundly transformed.

The mission of literature is to tell us who we are."—Cheryl Strayed @CherylStrayed

That we must help ourselves. That after destiny has delivered what it delivers, we are responsible for our lives.

You are not a terrible person for wanting to break up with someone you love. You don't need a reason to leave. Wanting to leave is enough.

I got you," my friend the writer and teacher Jen Pastiloff says so often she has it tattooed on her arm. That's what this vespers thing felt like to me, Spent. Like someone had me. Like for the tiniest glimmer of a moment I was held by a force more powerful than the force I could muster on my own.

But transformation often demands that we separate our emotional responses from our rational minds. Your rational mind knows that men leave their wives for younger women all the time. Your emotional response is you can't believe your father did. Your rational mind knows that it's hard for even strong, ethical people to sustain a long-term monogamy. Your emotional response is you're shocked your own parents failed to do so.

This is not your responsibility but it is your problem.

Dear Scared of the Future, There's a crazy lady living in your head.

I mean: be your best, most gigantic self.

Transformation often demands that we separate our emotional responses from our rational minds

You will regret the small thing you didn't say for the rest of your life. Say thank you.

And if there's one thing I believe more than I believe anything else, it's that you can't fake the core. The truth that lives there will eventually win out. It's a god we must obey, a force that brings us all inevitably to our knees.

our minds are small, but our hearts are big. Just about every one of us has fucked up at some point or another

We're all just walking and walking and walking and trying to find our way, that all roads lead eventually to the mountaintop.

Travel by foot. There is so much you can't identify at top speed.

You go on by doing the best you can. You go on by being generous. You go on by being true. You go on by offering comfort to others who can't go on. You go on by allowing the unbearable days to pass and allowing the pleasure in other days. You go on by finding a channel for your love and another for your rage.

every last one of us will need to fuck up and be forgiven, that we're all just walking and walking and walking and trying to find our way,

But transformation often demands that we separate our emotional responses from our rational minds.

Let yourself be gutted. Let it open you. Start there.

Our minds are small, but our hearts are big. Just about every one of us has fucked up at one point or another. You're in a pickle. You did things you didn't hope to do. You have not always been your

What's on the other side of the tiny gigantic revolution in which I move from loathing to loving my own skin? What fruits would that particular liberation bear? We don't know—as a culture, as a gender, as individuals, you and I. The fact that we don't know is feminism's one true failure. We claimed the agency, we granted ourselves the authority, we gathered the accolades, but we never stopped worrying about how our asses looked in our jeans.

It's that the work you do each day matters. Even if it's work that seems invisible. Even if it's work that doesn't lead to the outcome you hoped for. Even if others attempt to undo your work.