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
ends wells
He hadn't loved me well in the end, but he'd loved me well when it mattered.
sweaters hiking knitting
Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again. As if everything gained was inevitably lost
art mean interesting
It isn't enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the limits of the personal, it must be driven by the engine of what the story means.
crazy long answers
Can I convince the person about whom I'm crazy to be crazy about me? The short answer is no. The long answer is no.
reading voice envy
We are savages insides. We all want to be the chosen, the beloved, the esteemed. There isn't a person reading this who hasn't at one point or another had that why not me? voice pop into the interior mix when something good has happened to someone else.
men numbers dating
When going on a date with someone they met online, the number-one fear that straight women have is going on a date with a serial killer. The number-one fear straight men have is going on a date with a fat woman. That says everything.
heart rabbit-holes bitterness
There isn't a thing to eat down there in the rabbit hole of your bitterness except your own desperate heart.
artist race humanity
Because when an artist has to assert that her intended audience is all humans rather than those who happen to be of her particular gender or race, what she’s actually having to assert is the breadth and depth of her own humanity.
worry up-to-you world
Don't worry. Don't apologize. Don't cower behind the defeated security of there is no 'room for someone like me'. There isn't room for any one of us. It's up to you to make a place for yourself in the world. So get to work.
mother grieving suffering
I had to go on without my mother, even though I was suffering terribly, grieving her.
gay color literature
It's still true that literary works by women, gays, and writers of color are often framed as specific, rather than universal, small rather than big, personal or particular rather than socially significant.
men battle stories
Men's stories are seen as universal, women's as particular. What women are up against is the battle to not be marginalized.
thinking ridiculous made
I'd walk and think about my entire life. I'd find my strength again, far from everything that had made my life ridiculous.
motivation writing people
I hope when people ask what you're going to do with your English degree and/or creative writing degree you'll say: Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire; or maybe just: Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters. And then smile very serenely until they say, Oh.