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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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Cheryl Strayed
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: September 17
Blogger
Essayist
Feminist
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Spangler
Pennsylvania
True
Loud
Earth
Anyway
Even
Absolutely
Way
Answer
Always
Asked
Answers
Knew
Often
Tougher

More quotes by Cheryl Strayed

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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.
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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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I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.
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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.
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I'd walk and think about my entire life. I'd find my strength again, far from everything that had made my life ridiculous.
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Every time I read Erin Belieu work I'm pierced in that wonderful way poetry can.
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I felt something growing in me that was strong and real.
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The complicated thing about friends is that sometimes they are totally wrong about us and sometimes they are totally right and it's almost always only in retrospect that we know which is which.
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My whole life sort of ended when my mom died.
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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.
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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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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.
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What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I'd done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?
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In your twenties you're becoming who you're going to be and so you might as well not be an asshole.
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Jump high and hard with intention and heart.
Cheryl Strayed
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There isn't a thing to eat down there in the rabbit hole of your bitterness except your own desperate heart.
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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
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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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Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.
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Blood is thicker than water, my mother had always said when I was growing up, a sentiment I’d often disputed. But it turned out that it didn’t matter whether she was right or wrong. They both flowed out of my cupped palms.
Cheryl Strayed