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...the ultimate dwindling resource in the human arrangement isn’t cheap oil or potable water or even common sense, but mercy.

Cheryl Strayed

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Cheryl Strayed
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: September 17
Blogger
Essayist
Feminist
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Spangler
Pennsylvania
Common
Arrangement
Water
Resource
Sense
Arrangements
Human
Cheap
Humans
Oil
Even
Mercy
Resources
Ultimate
Dwindling

More quotes by Cheryl Strayed

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I receive a lot of letters like yours. Most go on in length, describing all sorts of maddening situations and communications in bewildered detail, but in each there is the same question at its core: Can I convince the person about whom I am crazy to be crazy about me? The short answer is no. The long answer is no.
Cheryl Strayed
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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
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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
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Run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.
Cheryl Strayed
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It seemed to me the way it must feel to people who cut themselves on purpose. Not pretty, but clean. Not good, but void of regret. I was trying to heal. Trying to get the bad out of my system so I could be good again. To cure me of myself.
Cheryl Strayed
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My concept of an advice giver had been a therapist or a know-it-all, and then I realized nobody listens to the know-it-alls. You turn to the people you know, the friend who has been in the thick of it or messed up - and I'm that person for sure.
Cheryl Strayed
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Write like a motherfucker.
Cheryl Strayed
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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
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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.
Cheryl Strayed
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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
Cheryl Strayed
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And every last one of us can do better than give up.
Cheryl Strayed
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Being so alone and so silent for so long gave me the opportunity to see how our brains actually work. I think of that so often in my regular life, as I'm always interacting with people or with my computer or phone.
Cheryl Strayed
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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.
Cheryl Strayed
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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.
Cheryl Strayed
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I was trying to find a new home in the world.
Cheryl Strayed
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So release yourself from that. Don't be strategic or coy. Strategic and coy are for jackasses. Be brave. Be authentic. Practice saying the word 'love' to the people you love so when it matters the most to say it, you will.
Cheryl Strayed
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Fear begets fear. Power begets power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn't long before I actually wasn't afraid.
Cheryl Strayed
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I walked all those miles, I learned all those lessons. It's as if my new life was the gift I got at the end of a long struggle.
Cheryl Strayed
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But compassion isn't about solutions. It's about giving all the love that you've got.
Cheryl Strayed
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The healing power of even the most microscopic exchange with someone who knows in a flash precisely what you're talking about because she experienced that thing too cannot be overestimated.
Cheryl Strayed