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Cheryl Strayed Quotes

Total quotes: 71
“I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Tagged: Safe, Strong, Brave, Choice, decision, undefeated, unbeatable, Inspirational, Empowering, Encouragement
“One of the scariest things in our lives is actually doing what we know we want to do.”
— Cheryl Strayed, How to Be Creative Like a Motherf*cker — Cheryl Strayed
Tagged: Tim Podcast, Fear, Inspirational
“Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren’t a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Tagged: Alone, Introvert, State Of Being
“I'd finally come to understand what it had been: a yearning for a way out, when actually what I had wanted to find was a way in.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Tagged: Way Out, Way In, Life
“Don’t listen to those people who suggest you should be ‘over it’ by now. The people who squawk the loudest about such things have almost never had to get over anything. Or at least not anything that was genuinely, mind..soul-crushingly life altering.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Loudness, Noise, Talkative
“There is no why. You don't have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you're holding. And, dear one, you and I both were granted a mighty generous hand.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Life
“With him I felt trapped, branded, held, and beloved. Like a daughter.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Tagged: Love, Relationships, Feeling Small, Unhealthy Love
“You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Advice By Cheryl
“Just because you leave someone doesn't mean the relationship is over. It goes on.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things
Tagged: Life
“The obliterated place is equal parts destruction and creation. The obliterated place is pitch black and bright light. It is water and parched earth. It is mud and it is manna. The real work of deep grief is making a home there.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Grief, Re-invention
“You have to pay your own electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you’ve got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth. But that’s all.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Life, Responsibility
“Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Belonging, Nurture
“But the reality is we often become our kindest, most ethical selves only by seeing what it feels like to be a selfish jackass first.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Jackass, kindness, Self-awareness, Self-improvement
“It was like, my book is on the New York Times bestseller list right now and we do not have any money in our checking account.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Scratch
Tagged: Books, Money, Writers, Writers and money
“Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Joy, Happiness, The Past, Moving On, Change
“There isn’t a thing to eat down there in the rabbit hole of your bitterness except your own desperate heart.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Judging Others, Jealousy, Bitterness, Pride
“The universe, I'd learned, was never, ever kidding. It would take whatever it wanted and it would never give it back.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Tagged: Universe, Lessons Learned, Life
“You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt with. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding and my dear one, you and I have been granted a mighty generous one.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Life, Dealing With Life
“I was a pebble. I was a leaf. I was the jagged branch of a tree. I was nothing to them and they were everything to me.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Wild
Tagged: Nature, Peaceful, Being One, Being Whole
“The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light. Look hard. Risk that.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Love, How to be good at love
“In your twenties you're becoming who you're going to be and so you might as well not be an asshole.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Twenties, 20s, H4D-52
“The narratives we create in order to justify our actions and choices become in so many ways who we are. They are the things we say back to ourselves to explain our complicated lives.”
— Cheryl Strayed, The Bad Things You Did
Tagged: Healing, Bad Things, Mistakes, forgiveness, Forgiving Yourself
“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.”
— Cheryl Strayed, What Would You Tell Your 20-Something Self If You Could Talk To Her Now?
Tagged: 20-Somethings, Advice, life advice, Love, Love Advice
“When used by emotionally healthy people with good intentions, ultimatums offer a respectful and loving way though an impasse that will sooner or later destroy a relationship on its own anyway.”
— Cheryl Strayed, How the Real Work Is Done
Tagged: Dear Sugar, Work, Careers, Unemployment, Relationships, Advice
“To hold the truth within me that some things are so sad and wrong and unanswerable that the question must simply stand alone like a spear in the mud.”
— Cheryl Strayed, The Baby Bird
Tagged: Life, Choosing Life, Healing, Trauma, Abuse, Truth
“There’s a crazy lady living in your head. I hope you’ll be comforted to hear that you’re not alone. Most of us have an invisible inner terrible someone who says all sorts of nutty stuff that has no basis in truth.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Your Invisible Inner Terrible Someone
Tagged: Terrible Things, fears, Anxiety, Overcoming Your Fears, Emotional Well-Being
“Forgiveness doesn't sit there like a pretty boy in a bar. Forgiveness is the old fat guy you have to haul up a hill.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: forgiveness
“I’d finally come to understand what it had been: a yearning for a way out, when actually what I had wanted was a way in. I was there now. Or close.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Tagged: Loss, Starting Over, Acceptance, Resisting Change
“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”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Advice By Cheryl
“So release yourself from that. Don't be strategic or coy. Strategic and coy are for jackasses. Be brave. Be authentic. Practice saying the word 'love' to the people you love so when it matters the most to say it, you will.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Advice By Cheryl
“We are obligated to the people we care about and who we allow to care about us, whether we say we love them or not.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things
Tagged: Love, Relationships, Obligation
“Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can't cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It's just there, and you have to survive it.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Love, Survival, Suffering
“Forgiveness bellows from the bottom of the canoe. There are doubts, dangers, unfathomable travesties. There are stories you'll learn if you're strong enough to travel there. One of them might cure you.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things
Tagged: forgiveness
“You can't fake the core. ”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Honesty, Truth, Personal Truth
“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.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Doing The Right Thing, Right, Wrong, Responsibility, Intuition, Trusting Yourself, Trusting Your Gut
“Fear begets fear. Power begets power. ”
— Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Tagged: Fear, Power, Mindset, Perception
“I feel strongly that we're only hurting ourselves as writers by being so secretive about money. There's no other job in the world where you get your master's degree in that field and you're like, 'Well, I might make zero or I might make $5 million!'”
— Cheryl Strayed, Scratch
Tagged: Books, Money, Writers, Writers and money
“I had accrued $50,000 in credit card debt to write that book. The same thing happened later with 'Wild', only I was in deeper debt. So I got that check for 'Torch', and it was gone the next day. I actually paid my credit card bill. Poof!”
— Cheryl Strayed, Scratch
Tagged: Books, Money, Writers, Writers and money, Quote of the Moment
“Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don't know what it is yet.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
“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.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Advice By Cheryl
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