And if you're gonna be a writer, you just truly have to be a writer. You have to throw yourself into it and deal with the negative consequences of that. And there are negative consequences. I mean, there are. But, it's also true that you wouldn't be interviewing me right now if I had worked at the post office. You wouldn't. I would be still writing, but I wouldn't have gotten as far as I've gotten, because I wouldn't have had the time.
Cheryl StrayedAlone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren't a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was.
Cheryl StrayedBut if I could go back in time, I wouldn't do a single thing differently. What if all those things I did were the things that got me here?
Cheryl StrayedWhat 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 StrayedYou have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.
Cheryl Strayed