“ It was good. It was like something inordinately beautiful and out of this world. Like I’d found an actual planet that I didn’t know had been there all along. Planet Heroin. The place where there was n… Cheryl Strayed
“ But as you are surely aware, forgiveness doesn't mean you let the forgiven stomp all over you once again. Forgiveness means you've found a way forward that acknowledges harm done and hurt caused witho… Cheryl Strayed
“ You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness. Cheryl Strayed
“ In the mornings, my pain was magnified by about a thousand. In the morning there weren’t only those sad facts about my life. Now there was also the additional fact that I was a pile of shit. Cheryl Strayed
“ I think it's neat you do what you want. Not enough chicks do that, if you ask me--just tell society and their expectations to go fuck themselves. If more women did that, we'd be better off. Cheryl Strayed
“ This isn't a spotless life. There is much ahead, my immaculate little peach. And there is no way to say it other than to say it: marriage is indeed this horribly complex thing for which you appear to… Cheryl Strayed
“ Real change happens on the level of the gesture. It's one person doing one thing differently than he or she did before. Cheryl Strayed
“ What’s important is that you make the leap. Jump high and hard with intention and heart. Pay no mind to the vision that the commission made up. It’s up to you to make your life. Take what you have and… Cheryl Strayed
“ Transformation isn't a butterfly. It's the thing before you get to be a pretty bug flying away. It's huddling in the dark cocoon and then pushing your way out. It's the messy work of making sense of y… Cheryl Strayed
“ 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 cou… Cheryl Strayed
“ You don't have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don't have to explain what your plan to do with your life. You don't have to justify your e… Cheryl Strayed
“ I was a terrible believer in things,but I was also a terrible nonbeliever in things. I was as searching as I was skeptical. I didn't know where to put my faith,or if there was such a place,or even wha… Cheryl Strayed
“ I'll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn't… Cheryl Strayed
