Quotes from Cheryl Strayed

I've long believed literature's greatest superpower is how it makes us feel less alone.

feel that way too when I say such things to others who have lost someone they loved. We all do. It feels lame because we like to think we can solve things. It feels insufficient because there is nothing we can actually do to change what's horribly true.

Don't let a man who doesn't love you be one of them.

How frightened those kittens were, and yet how they persisted. How when two strangers offered up their palms, they stepped in.

enough compassion to make us feel safe within our broken need, and enough wisdom to hold on to hope.

No is golden. No is the kind of power the good witch wields.

Each of Dermoût's sentences came at me like a soft knowing dagger, depicting a far-off land that felt to me like the blood of all the places I used to love.

She looked at her parents, clear-eyed and astonished, like she understood exactly who she was for the very first time. A prisoner of her own body.

People die because they want who they want. They do all kinds of crazy, stupid, sweet, tender, amazing, self-destructive things. You aren't going to make anyone "see the light and realize that what they're doing is wrong." You just aren't.

Not how the kittens suffered during those weeks they were wandering inside the dark building with no way out—though surely there's something there too—but how they saved themselves. How frightened those kittens were, and yet how they persisted. How when two strangers offered up their palms, they stepped in.

Your sense of despair about the meaning of your work sustains itself only if you believe the narrowest version of the story—the one that assumes your contribution to the greater good can be measured by only one result. But it can't. You know that.

The music felt like sustenance to me, like food

Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naïve pomposity. Many

You Don't Have to Be Broken for Me

Humans are beautifully imperfect and complex. We're horny, ass-saving, ego-driven drug fiends, among other, more noble things.

Strategic and coy are for jackasses.

certain point we get to decide who it is we allow to influence us.

Real change happens on the level of the gesture. It's one person doing one thing differently than he or she did before.

Acceptance asks only that you embrace what's true.

This is not because he doesn't love you. But love doesn't make a mean drunk not a mean drunk or a narcissist not a narcissist or a jackass not a jackass.

Tvoje p?edpoklady o život? druhých lidí p?ímo souvisejí s tvou naivní nabub?elostí. Mnozí lidé, o nichž si myslíš, že jsou bohatí, nejsou bohatí. Mnozí lidé, o nichž si myslíš, že to mají v život? snadné, museli tvrd? pracovat. Mnozí lidé, kte?í zdánliv? jen tak proplouvají životem, trp?li a stále ješt? trpí.

If love were an animal, what species would it be and could you train it? Love would be two animals: a hummingbird and a snake. Both are perfectly untrainable.

Self-confidence means living out what you already know to be true.

Real change happens on the level of the gesture. It's one person doing one thing differently than he or she did before. It's the man who opts not to invite his abusive mother to