Quotes from Cheryl Strayed

Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me. Insisting on the story was a form of mind control, but for the most part, it worked.

I don't think there's a single dumbass thing I've done in my adult life that I didn't know was a dumbass thing to do while I was doing it. Even when I justified it to myself—as I did every damn time—the truest part of me knew I was doing the wrong thing. Always.

It was only then, when I humbly surrendered, that I was able to do the work I needed to do.

So many books have saved my life. I never quite imagined that a guidebook would

We are all savages inside. We all want to be the chosen, the beloved, the esteemed.

You're up too high and down too low. Neither is the place where we get any work done.

You have a bundle on your head, sweet pea. And though that bundle may be impossible for you to see right now, it's entirely visible to me. You aren't torn. You're only just afraid.

I know it's a kick in the pants to hear that the problem is you, but it's also fucking fantastic. You are, after all, the only person you can change.

we must help ourselves. That after destiny has delivered what it delivers, we are responsible for our lives. We can choose to fling our kids into the grass or we can take deep breaths and walk up and down the hall.

The unifying theme is resilience and faith.

The unifying theme is resilience and faith. The unifying theme is being a warrior and a motherfucker. It is not fragility. It's strength. It's nerve. And "if your Nerve, deny you—," as Emily Dickinson wrote, "go above your Nerve.

I want to see the contours of your second beating heart.

Trust youtself. It's Sugar's golden rule. Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.

It's not about becoming a movie star. It's about the down-in-the-dirt art of inhabiting the person you aspire to be while carrying on your shoulders the uncertain and hungry man you know you are.

There are plenty of things in the world to be sad about. But a boy who doesn't love you shouldn't be one of them.

You're clear you don't want to act on your crush, so trust that clarity and be grateful that you have it. My inbox is jammed with emails from people who are not so clear. They're tortured by indecision and guilt and lust. They love X but want to fuck Z....Z is like a motorcycle with no one on it. Beautiful. Going nowhere.

I was sexually assaulted at seventeen. I was naïve and I didn't understand it. Anxiety became a deep part of my life, and it almost pulled me under. Trudging onward was all I could do. I've made peace with it.

I happen to believe that America is dying of loneliness, that we, as a people, have bought into the false dream of convenience, and turned away from a deep engagement with our internal lives—those

I'll never know, and neither will you of the life you don't choose.

love" comes loaded with promises and commitments that are highly fragile and easily broken.

fountains of inconvenient feeling—and toward the frantic enticements of

He taught you how to love like you've never loved before. He taught you how to suffer like you've never suffered before. Perhaps the next thing he has to teach you is acceptance. And the thing after that, forgiveness.

We are here to build the house. It's our work, our job, the most important gig of all: to make a place that belongs to us, a structure composed of our own moral code. Not the code that only echoes imposed cultural values, but the one that tells us on a visceral level what to do. You know what's right for you and what's wrong for you.

my disbelief as well as my certainty—was the unification of the ancient and the future parts of me. It was everything I intended and yet still I was surprised by what I got.