Quote

When you meet a man in the doorway of a Mexican restaurant who later kisses you while explaining that this kiss doesn’t “mean anything” because, much as he likes you, he is not interested in having a relationship with you or anyone right now, just laugh and kiss him back. Your daughter will have his sense of humor. Your son will have his eyes.

Cheryl Strayed

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Cheryl Strayed
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: September 17
Blogger
Essayist
Feminist
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Spangler
Pennsylvania
Doesn
Interested
Kiss
Anything
Laughing
Kissing
Doorway
Back
Humor
Likes
Doorways
Right
Relationship
Son
Kisses
Mean
Eyes
Laugh
Restaurant
Much
Anyone
Daughter
Explaining
Men
Eye
Later
Mexican
Sense
Meet
Restaurants

More quotes by Cheryl Strayed

Image
I think being a woman alone enhanced the impulse in others to be generous. What we're told is that to be a woman alone is to be in a dangerous situation. The message is that people are gong to prey on you and do bad things to you. That may be true in some cases, but what I experienced was the other case.
Cheryl Strayed
Image
In your twenties you're becoming who you're going to be and so you might as well not be an asshole.
Cheryl Strayed
Image
Looking back at my younger self, that I'm not so different than I am now. I was always a seeker. I wanted very ambitiously to be a writer and what happened between now and then is that I continually threw myself in the way of those things that would help me become that, of doing and finding and learning from things that altered me along the way.
Cheryl Strayed
Image
But compassion isn't about solutions. It's about giving all the love that you've got.
Cheryl Strayed
Image
I didn't feel sad or happy. I didn't feel proud or ashamed. I only felt that in spite of all the things I'd done wrong, in getting myself here, I'd done right.
Cheryl Strayed
Image
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.
Cheryl Strayed
Image
The father’s job is to teach his children how to be warriors, to give them the confidence to get on the horse to ride into battle when it’s necessary to do so. If you don’t get that from your father, you have to teach yourself.
Cheryl Strayed
Image
Writing is such a strangely and radically private act, and yet its purpose is this great sense of connection and community. I mean, I wanted people to love the book. And the only way to get them to love it is to try to make it good for them. So of course the audience has to be considered.
Cheryl Strayed
Image
Writing is part intuition and part trial and error, but mostly it's very hard work.
Cheryl Strayed
Image
It's a long life, sweetheart, and time heals all wounds.
Cheryl Strayed
Image
You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt with. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding and my dear one, you and I have been granted a mighty generous one.
Cheryl Strayed
Image
Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.
Cheryl Strayed
Image
The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.
Cheryl Strayed
Image
The place of true healing is a fierce place. It's a giant place. it's a place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmering light.
Cheryl Strayed
Image
I write to find what I have to say. I edit to figure out how to say it right.
Cheryl Strayed
Image
Wounded?” was all I could manage. “Yes,” said Pat. “And you’re wounded in the same place. That’s what fathers do if they don’t heal their wounds. They wound their children in the same place.
Cheryl Strayed
Image
People do support themselves as artists and writers, so there's no need to be all doom and gloom about it. You just have to push forward. You have to follow your vision and hope for the best. You have to write for love.
Cheryl Strayed
Image
Forgiveness doesn't sit there like a pretty boy in a bar. Forgiveness is the old fat guy you have to haul up a hill.
Cheryl Strayed
Image
He kissed me hard and I kissed him back harder, like it was the end of an era that had lasted all of my life.
Cheryl Strayed
Image
Not everyone wants to know everything their partner did. Maybe it's enough to say, Things aren't going well in our marriage. I've made mistakes. I don't think you've been a good partner to me. How do we go forward together? I think there's a different answer for every couple. But I think intimacy is asking that question.
Cheryl Strayed