Their leaving made me melancholy, though I also felt something like relief when they disappeared into the dark trees. I hadn't needed to get anything from my pack; I'd only wanted to be alone. Alone 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.

It's funny, it never occurred to me that a movie star would play me. But now that she [Reese Witherspoon] is playing me, it's like, of course, it couldn't be anyone else! I don't know if you've seen pictures of Reese and me and Reese and my daughter Bobbi, who's named after my mother, and also plays me. There's a kind of resemblance.

I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go.

My whole life sort of ended when my mom died.

Wanting to leave is enough.

Can I convince the person about whom I'm crazy to be crazy about me? The short answer is no. The long answer is no.

You can't replicate walking 94 days through the wilderness by yourself with a really heavy pack until you do it.