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
goodbye believe people
We love and care for oodles of people, but only a few of them, if they died, would make us believe we could not continue to live. Imagine if there were a boat upon which you could put only four people, and everyone else known and beloved to you would then cease to exist. Who would you put on that boat? It would be painful, but how quickly you would decide: You and you and you and you, get in. The rest of you, goodbye.
long begets
Fear begets fear. Power begets power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn't long before I actually wasn't afraid.
crazy love-is giving
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.
memories men world
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.
compassion giving empathy
But compassion isn't about solutions. It's about giving all the love that you've got.
regret lying thinking
She tried to think of what to say to make it all better again, or at least the way it was before she'd made her confession, though she didn't regret having confessed. Perhaps that was what had been wrong with her all along. Now that the lie wasn't between them anymore, maybe she could love him again.
dark tree leaving
Their leaving made me melancholy, though I also felt something like relief when they disappeared into the dark trees. I hadn't needed to get anything from my pack; I'd only wanted to be alone. 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.
long time-heals sweetheart
It's a long life, sweetheart, and time heals all wounds.
inspirational life-changing rooms
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.
enough
Wanting to leave is enough.
inspirational life-changing giving
The universe, I'd learned, was never, ever kidding. It would take whatever it wanted and it would never give it back.
what-if done made
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?
fun adventure writing
A lot of people go off and have fun adventures, or hard adventures, and their impulse is to write about them right away. What really makes a difference is having some perspective on what happened.
art bears anecdotes
Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear in our lives.