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The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods.

Cheryl Strayed

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Cheryl Strayed
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: September 17
Blogger
Essayist
Feminist
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Spangler
Pennsylvania
Wanting
Woods
Find
Way
Wilderness

More quotes by Cheryl Strayed

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I asked, often out loud: Who is tougher than me? The answer was always the same, and even when I knew absolutely there was no way on this earth that it was true, I said it anyway: No one.
Cheryl Strayed
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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.
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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.
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You have to say I am forgiven again and again until it becomes the story you believe about yourself.
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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?
Cheryl Strayed
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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
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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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What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?
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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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.
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I taught workshops at universities. I wrote for magazines. This took time and insane amounts of juggling, but it's how I earned a living.
Cheryl Strayed
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Every time I read Erin Belieu work I'm pierced in that wonderful way poetry can.
Cheryl Strayed
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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.
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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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
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I was amazed that what I needed to survive could be carried on my back. And, most surprising of all, that I could carry it.
Cheryl Strayed
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Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.
Cheryl Strayed
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Healing is a small and ordinary and very burnt thing. And it's one thing and one thing only: it's doing what you have to do.
Cheryl Strayed
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It's a long life, sweetheart, and time heals all wounds.
Cheryl Strayed
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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.
Cheryl Strayed