"I'm reading George Saunders's story collection, "Tenth of December." He was my mentor at the University of Syracuse. The stories are mind-blowing like everyone says."
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Cheryl Strayed quotes (page 10 of 10)
198 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I actually don't have any fear of people reading Wild and going out unprepared. Because one of the best things that ever happened to me was that I went out unprepared. And when you really think about it, all I did wrong was that I took too much stuff, which is the most common backpacker mistake. The part that I wasn't prepared for is the part you can't prepare for."
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"If you want to read anything nasty about me, just go to the backpacker websites. There's this kind of elitist branch where they really believe that I had no business going backpacking."
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"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."
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"You have to keep walking, no matter what. If you don't, it's a living death. You're just standing in one place dying."
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"When someone you love truly dies, you have to find them over and over again in the world, and I think you do that on a very psychic, unconscious level, and I think in some ways I was calling out to that spirit of my mother when I saw the fox. It doesn't surprise me it's in animals that I find my mother."
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"I think being a woman alone enhanced the impulse in others to be generous. What we're told is that to be a woman alone is to be in a dangerous situation. The message is that people are gong to prey on you and do bad things to you. That may be true in some cases, but what I experienced was the other case."
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"The writing life doesn't move in a straight line. I've had successes and rejections all along the way, at every stage of my career, and I will continue to do so. Acceptances and rejections don't define me. They're both part of what it means to be a writer. My job is to simply keep doing the work."
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"I think a lot of people have the idea of an editor being someone who comes in like a dictator, and says, "You can't have that scene." And it never is like that - or perhaps some editors are like that and they're assholes, and they're not good editors. A good editor actually says, "I respect you" and they understand that you have a vision and they're actually trying to help you realize it."
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"I think the first thing - if you want to be a writer - the first thing you need to do is write. Which sounds like an obvious piece of advice. But so many people have this feeling they want to be a writer and they love to read but they don't actually write very much. The main part of being a writer, though, is being profoundly alone for hours on end, uninterrupted by email or friends or children or romantic partners and really sinking into the work and writing. That's how I write. That's how writing gets done."
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"Of course some people manage to write books really young and publish really young. But for most writers, it takes several years because you have to apprentice yourself to the craft, and you also have to grow up. I think maturity is connected to one's ability to write well."
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"Writing can be such a lonely endeavor that I do think community is also important.Meeting at cafes and exchanging work and reading to each other and giving each other little bits of encouragement and feedback and thoughts, I think that's an incredibly rich experience because what it does is it gives you a sense of community but also purpose. If I know I'm going to meet you in a cafe next Tuesday, I'm going to write something that I can hand to you. Discipline is such a challenge for so many writers and so I think that that's a key benefit of being in a group."
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"All of us, as we mature and grow up - if we're doing life right - we evolve."
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"Not everyone wants to know everything their partner did. Maybe it's enough to say, "Things aren't going well in our marriage. I've made mistakes. I don't think you've been a good partner to me. How do we go forward together?" I think there's a different answer for every couple. But I think intimacy is asking that question."
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"There's no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish or die or take another course. But I was pretty certain as I sat there that tonight that if it hadn't been for Eddie, I wouldn't have found myself on the PCT. And though it was true that everything I felt for him sat like a boulder in my throat, this realization made the boulder sit ever so much lighter. He hadn't loved me well in the end, but he'd loved me well when it mattered."
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"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. Perhaps not forgiving yourself is the flip side of your stealing-this-now cycle. Would you be a better or worse person if you forgave yourself for the bad things you did? If you perpetually condemn yourself for being a liar and a thief, does that make you good?"
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"I taught workshops at universities. I wrote for magazines. This took time and insane amounts of juggling, but it's how I earned a living."
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"The only way out of a hole is to climb out."
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