44 Soul-Smashingly Beautiful Cheryl Strayed Quotes That Will Break You Open And Set You Free

“You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“It is impossible for you to go on as you were before, so you must go on as you never have.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“Don’t do what you know on a gut level to be the wrong thing to do. Don’t stay when you know you should go or go when you know you should stay. Don’t fight when you should hold steady or hold steady when you should fight. Don’t focus on the short-term fun instead of the long-term fall out. Don’t surr…”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“I don’t think there’s a single dumbass thing I’ve done in my adult life that I didn’t know was a dumbass thing to do while I was doing it. Even when I justified it to myself—as I did every damn time—the truest part of me knew I was doing the wrong thing. Always.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“Go, even though you love him. Go, even though he is kind and faithful and dear to you. Go, even though he's your best friend and you're his. Go, even though you can't imagine your life without him. Go, even though he adores you and your leaving will devastate him. Go, even though your friends will b…”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“Be brave enough to break your own heart.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“It’s hard to go. It’s scary and lonely…and half the time you’ll be wondering why the hell you’re in Cincinnati or Austin or North Dakota or Mongolia or wherever your melodious little finger-plucking heinie takes you. There will be boondoggles and discombobulated days, freaked-out nights and metaphor…”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“Let yourself be gutted. Let it open you. Start here.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“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 carry us. There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don't know what it is yet.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can't cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It's just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it a…”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“How wild it was, to let it be.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“Just because you leave someone doesn't mean the relationship is over. It goes on.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“This is not your responsibility but it is your problem.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“We are all entitled to our opinions and religious beliefs, but we are not entitled to make shit up and then use the shit we made up to oppress other people.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“We are obligated to the people we care about and who we allow to care about us, whether we say we love them or not.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“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 without letting either your anger or your pain rule your life or define your relationship with the one who did you wrong.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“Don’t surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn’t true anymore.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“If someone is being unkind or petty or jealous or distant or weird, you don’t have to take it in. You don’t have to turn it into a big psychodrama about your worth. That behavior so often is not even about you. It’s about the person who’s being unkind or petty or jealous or distant or weird. If this…”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“Writing is hard....Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“Wanting was a wilderness.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“You're so outraged and surprised this shitty thing happened to you that there's a piece of you that isn't yet convinced it did. You're looking for the explanation, the loophole, the bright twist in the dark tale that reverses its course. Anyone would be. It's the reason I've had to narrate my own st…”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“The obliterated place is equal parts destruction and creation. The obliterated place is pitch black and bright light. It is water and parched earth. It is mud and it is manna. The real work of deep grief is making a home there.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“The narratives we create in order to justify our actions and choices become in so many ways who we are. They are the things we say back to ourselves to explain our complicated lives. Perhaps the reason you've not yet been able to forgive yourself is that you're still invested in your self-loathing.…”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“You can't fake the core.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“Be about ten times more magnanimous than you believe yourself capable of. Your life will be a hundred times better for it.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com