Cheryl Strayed
Cheryl Strayed
Cheryl Strayedis an American memoirist, novelist, and essayist. The author of four books, her award-winning writing has been published widely in national magazines and anthologies...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth17 September 1968
CitySpangler, PA
CountryUnited States of America
inspirational life-changing flower
I set my toothbrush down, then leaned into the mirror and stared into my own eyes. I could feel myself disintegrating inside myself like a past-bloom flower in the wind. Every time I moved a muscle, another petal of me blew away. Please, I thought. Please.
I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go.
light stronger path
There is a path toward the light. The one that goes blink, blink, blink inside your chest when you know what you're doing is right. Listen to it. Trust it. Let it make you stronger than you are.
mean writing office
And if you're gonna be a writer, you just truly have to be a writer. You have to throw yourself into it and deal with the negative consequences of that. And there are negative consequences. I mean, there are. But, it's also true that you wouldn't be interviewing me right now if I had worked at the post office. You wouldn't. I would be still writing, but I wouldn't have gotten as far as I've gotten, because I wouldn't have had the time.
life positive success
Jump high and hard with intention and heart.
perception stories world
In my perception, the world wasn't a graph or formula or an equation. It was a story.
what-if go-back-in-time if-i-could
But if I could go back in time, I wouldn't do a single thing differently. What if all those things I did were the things that got me here?
distance differences risk
We are all at risk of something. Of ending up exactly where we began, of failing to imagine and find and know and actualize who we could be. The only difference is the distance of the leap.
grateful feet doe
Every time I set foot on that trail, I feel grateful for the PCTA for doing the work it does to protect and preserve it
inspirational morning life-changing
When I woke the next morning in my room at White's Motel, I showered and stood naked in front of the mirror, watching myself solemnly brush my teeth. I tried to feel something like excitement but came up only with a morose unease. Every now and then I could see myself-truly see myself-and a sentence would come to me, thundering like a god into my head, and as I saw myself then in front of that tarnished mirror what came was 'the woman with the hole in her heart'. That was me.
beautiful lonely night
It's hard to go. It's scary and lonely...and half the time you'll be wondering why the hell you're in Cincinnati or Austin or North Dakota or Mongolia or wherever your melodious little finger-plucking heinie takes you. There will be boondoggles and discombobulated days, freaked-out nights and metaphorical flat tires. But it will be soul-smashingly beautiful... It will open up your life.
fun bored sometimes
One thing any backpacker will tell you is that it's tedious and monotonous. You're bored sometimes, so you really have to make the fun in your head.
artist classic starving
I am, as they say, the classic starving artist.
giving-up giving lasts
And every last one of us can do better than give up.