You have to pay your own electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth. But that's all.
Cheryl StrayedSmall things such as this have saved me: how much I love my mother โ even after all these years. How powerfully I carry her within me. My grief is tremendous but my love is bigger. So is yours. You are not grieving your sonโs death because his death was ugly and unfair. Youโre grieving it because you loved him truly. The beauty in that is greater than the bitterness of his death.
Cheryl StrayedWhatโs 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. Itโs up to you to make your life. Take what you have and stack it up like a tower of teetering blocks. Build your dream around that.
Cheryl StrayedMen's stories are seen as universal, women's as particular. What women are up against is the battle to not be marginalized.
Cheryl StrayedOf all the things Iโd been skeptical about, I didnโt feel skeptical about this: the wilderness had a clarity that included me.
Cheryl StrayedOne of the scandalous things I did was as I read them afterward I would burn them. I loved them, but for practical reasons I had to lighten the load. I burned favorites, like William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying." There's a whole list in the back of my book. It's me,[Adolf] Hitler, [Benito] Mussolini, and Pol Pot. We're the book burners.
Cheryl Strayed