"Nobody's going to do your life for you. You have to do it yourself, whether you're rich or poor, out of money or raking it in, the beneficiary of ridiculous fortune or terrible injustice. And you have to do it no matter what is true. No matter what is hard. No matter what unjust, sad, sucky things befall you. Self-pity is a dead-end road. You make the choice to drive down it. It's up to you to decide to stay parked there or to turn around and drive out."
"Once I was in a cafe in Portland and the woman at the next table and I began chatting and in the course of our conversation she strongly recommend I visit this web site called 'The Rumpus' so I could read this advice column called 'Dear Sugar.' It was so painful not to tell her that in fact I was Sugar, but I didn't."
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Source: Cheryl Strayed (2012). “Wild (Oprah's Book Club 2.0 Digital Edition): From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail”, p.209, Vintage
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"You don't have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don't have to explain what your plan to do with your life. You don't have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don't have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history of economics or science or the arts."
"You will learn a lot about yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, of forgiveness, of emotional bravery. Be a warrior for love."
"What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?"
"Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore."
"Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will."