I'm about going out in the world and noticing stuff, and going home and writing it down, and putting it next to other stuff I've noticed and seeing what happens.

I write really well on the road.

When I was a little kid, I used to walk miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles of railroad tracks.

I was in Mongolia, pretty extreme situations. We were sick with dysentery, we were sick with bronchitis. I had been bitten by a dog for the first time in my life and my whole hand was black, and there was no way to even think of getting a rabies shot without driving for five days, and then you wouldn't have wanted that needle in your skin anyway. And I had my period. Everything was wrong at one time. Like, I couldn't have been more uncomfortable. And I stayed up - it was too cold to sleep.

Traveling is my priority, because it drives the writing, so I teach around the travel, and sometimes the travel is the teaching.

I've always said the toughest thing about learning to feel your feelings is that then you have to feel your feelings.

Cheryl Strayed is a courageous, gritty, and deceptively elegant writer.