524 Quotes by Cheryl Strayed

I was amazed that what I needed to survive could be carried on my back. And, most surprising of all, that I could carry it.

You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.

Healing is a small and ordinary and very burnt thing. And it's one thing and one thing only: it's doing what you have to do.

Be about ten times more magnanimous than you believe yourself capable of. Your life will be a hundred times better for it.

You get to define the terms of your life.

If there's one thing I believe more than I believe anything else, it's that you can't fake the core. The truth that lives there will eventually win out. It's a god we must obey, a force that brings us all inevitably to our knees.

Work hard. Do good. Be incredible!

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.

Small things such as this have saved me: how much I love my mother—even after all these years. How powerfully I carry her within me. My grief is tremendous but my love is bigger. So is yours. You are not grieving your son’s death because his death was ugly and unfair. You’re grieving it because you loved him truly. The beauty in that is greater than the bitterness of his death.