524 Quotes by Cheryl Strayed

Each night the black sky and the bright stars were my stunning companions; occasionally Id 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.

What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?

The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods.

Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear in our lives.

I'm reading George Saunders's story collection, "Tenth of December." He was my mentor at the University of Syracuse. The stories are mind-blowing like everyone says.

The universe, I’d learned, was never, ever kidding.

How wild it was, to let it be.

It was my life — like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me. How wild it was, to let it be.

I write to find what I have to say. I edit to figure out how to say it right.