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Cheryl Strayed Quotes | Quotes said by Cheryl Strayed

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #1

    (I)t was Lady who saved my mother's life. Lady, who made it possible for her not only to walk away from my father, but also to keep going. Horses were my mother's religion. It was them she wanted to be with all those Sundays as a child, when she'd been made to put on dresses to go to mass.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #2

    .. And now it was official: I loved REI more than I loved the people behind Snapple lemonade.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #3

    ... In your twenties you're becoming who you're going to be and so you might as well not be an asshole. Also, because it's harder to be magnanimous when you're in your twenties, I think, and so that's why I'd like to remind you of it. You're generally less humble in that decade than you'll ever be and this lack of humility is oddly mixed with insecurity and uncertainty and fear. You will learn a lot about yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, of forgiveness, of emotional bravery.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #4

    ...but thinking about it didn't do a thing. Thinking about it was a long dive into a bucket of shit that didn't have a bottom.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #5

    A beloved daughter who now spent holidays alone.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #6

    And now it was official: I loved REI more than I loved the people behind Snapple lemonade.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #7

    As close as we'd been when we were together, we were closer in our unraveling, telling each other everything at last, words that seemed to us might never have been spoken between two human beings before, so deep we went, saying everything that was beautiful and ugly and true.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #8

    As I clung to the chaparral that day, attempting to patch up my bleeding finger, terrified by every sound that the bull was coming back, I considered my options. There were only two and they were essentially the same. I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go. The bull, I acknowledged grimly, could be in either direction, since I hadn’t seen where he’d run once I closed my eyes. I could only choose between the bull that would take me back and the bull that would take me forward. And so I walked on.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #9

    At which point, at long last, there was the actual doing it, quickly followed by the grim realization of what it meant to do it, followed by the decision to quit doing it because doing it was absurd and pointless and ridiculously difficult and far more than I expected doing it would be and I was profoundly unprepared to do it.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #10

    Basking in the attention of the people who gathered around me, I didn't just feel like a backpacking expert. I felt like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #11

    Be fearless enough to let love transform you.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #12

    But as you are surely aware, forgiveness doesn't mean you let the forgiven stomp all over you once again. Forgiveness means you've found a way forward that acknowledges harm done and hurt caused without letting either your anger or your pain rule your life or define your relationship with the one who did you wrong.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #13

    But compassion isn't about solutions. It's about giving all the love that you've got.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #14

    But now that she was dying, I knew everything. My mother was in me already. Not just the parts of her that I knew, but the parts of her that had come before me too.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #15

    Each evening, I ached for the shelter of my tent, for the smallest sense that something was shielding me from the entire rest of the world, keeping me safe not from danger, but from vastness itself. I loved the dim, clammy dark of my tent, the cozy familiarity of the way I arranged my few belongings all around me each night.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #16

    Each night the black sky and the bright stars were my stunning companions; occasionally I'd see their beauty and solemnity so plainly that I'd realize in a piercing way that my mother was right. That someday I would be grateful and that in fact I was grateful now, that I felt something growing in me that was strong and real.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #17

    Fear begets fear. Power begets power. I willed myself to beget power.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #18

    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 this story was a form of mind control, but for the most part, it worked.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #19

    Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves...

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #20

    Go, even though you love him.
    Go, even though he is kind and faithful and dear to you.
    Go, even though he's your best friend and you're his.
    Go, even though you can't imagine your life without him.
    Go, even though he adores you and your leaving will devastate him.
    Go, even though your friends will be disappointed or surprised or pissed off or all three.
    Go, even though you once said you would stay.
    Go, even though you're afraid of being alone.
    Go, even though you're sure no one will ever love you as well as he does.
    Go, even though there is nowhere to go.
    Go, even though you don't know exactly why you can't stay.
    Go, because you want to.
    Because wanting to leave is enough.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #21

    Grief doesn't have a face.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #22

    He felt like a brother of mine, but not at all like my actual brother. He seemed like someone I'd always know even if I never saw him again.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #23

    He kissed me hard and I kissed him back harder, like it was the end of an era that had lasted all of my life.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #24

    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 tale.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #25

    I can't say when you'll get love or how you'll find it or even promise you that you will. I can only say you are worthy of it and that it's never too much to ask for it and that it's not crazy to fear you'll never have it again, even though your fears are probably wrong. 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 we receive. It's worthy of all the hullabaloo.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #26

    I cried and I cried and I cried. I wasn't crying because I was happy. I wasn't crying because I was sad. I wasn't crying because of my mother or my father or Paul. I was crying because I was full...I didn't feel like a big fate idiot anymore. And I didn't feel like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen. I felt fierce and humble and gathered up inside, like I was safe in this world too.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #27

    I didn't feel sad or happy. I didn't feel proud or ashamed. I only felt that in spite of all the things I'd done wrong, in getting myself here, I'd done right.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #28

    I got an abortion and learned how to make dehydrated tuna flakes and turkey jerky and took a refresher course on basic first aid and practiced using my water purifier in my kitchen sink. I had to change. I had to change was the thought that drove me in those months of planning. Not into a different person, but back to the person I used to be -- strong and responsible, clear-eyed and driven, ethical and good. And the PCT would make me that way. There, I'd walk and think about my entire life. I'd find my strength again, far from everything that had made my life ridiculous.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #29

    I had problems a therapist couldn't solve; grief that no man in a room could ameliorate.

  • Cheryl Strayed Quote #30

    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 fountains of inconvenient feeling—and toward the frantic enticements of what our friends in the Greed Business call the Free Market. We’re hurtling through time and space and information faster and faster, seeking that network connection. But at the same time we’re falling away from our families and our neighbors and ourselves. We ego-surf and update our status and brush up on which celebrities are ruining themselves, and how. But the cure won’t stick.

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