Latest Cheryl Strayed Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• The only way I've been able to stay informed without letting fury rule my life is to channel my rage into something that ultimately feels like love to me. The place I do that the best is in my writing. That's where I feel like I can tap into the power of story and maybe bring something good into the world.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Writing, World, Rage

  Source: www.wbur.org

• I am an advocate of honesty and openness, and I think deceit is a dangerous seed to plant and let grow in relationships.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Honesty, Thinking, Deceit

  Source: wbur.org

• 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.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Couple, Mistake, Thinking

  Source: wbur.org

• 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.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Moving, Writing, Mean

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Writing is such a strangely and radically private act, and yet its purpose is this great sense of connection and community. I mean, I wanted people to love the book. And the only way to get them to love it is to try to make it good for them. So of course the audience has to be considered.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Book, Writing, Mean

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Thinking, People, Vision

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Lonely, Encouragement, Reading

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Growing Up, Book, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Children, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• So much of what I've learned, so much of what's good in my life, was learned because something bad happened, or from making the wrong decision. Through bad decisions I learned how to find the ways to make the right ones.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Decision, Bad Decision, Wrong Decision

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• All of us, as we mature and grow up - if we're doing life right - we evolve.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Growing Up, Mature, Evolve

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Looking back at my younger self, that I'm not so different than I am now. I was always a seeker. I wanted very ambitiously to be a writer and what happened between now and then is that I continually threw myself in the way of those things that would help me become that, of doing and finding and learning from things that altered me along the way.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Different, Helping, Now And Then

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• My mom died when I was 22. My stepfather, who I loved like a father, pretty quickly got involved with another woman. Suddenly there was another woman sleeping in my mother's bed, and it was very difficult. Their relationship brought up my profound loss, and the truth was that my family would never be the same again.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Mom, Mother, Father

  Source: www.wbur.org

• I really came to literature through poetry.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Literature

  Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.bostonglobe.com. March 2, 2013.

• My family didn't go to church. Once when I slept over at the house of a friend, her parents brought me to Sunday school with her. I was given this little pamphlet of tiny poems about the natural world, about butterflies and sunsets. My 7-year-old self was so astounded by how these few words were creating pictures and feelings in me.

  Cheryl Strayed

  School, Sunset, Butterfly

  Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.bostonglobe.com. March 2, 2013.

• Every time I read Erin Belieu work I'm pierced in that wonderful way poetry can.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Way, Wonderful, Erin

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

• One of the scandalous things I did was as I read them afterward I would burn them. I loved them, but for practical reasons I had to lighten the load. I burned favorites, like William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying." There's a whole list in the back of my book. It's me,[Adolf] Hitler, [Benito] Mussolini, and Pol Pot. We're the book burners.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Book, Dying, Lists

  Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.bostonglobe.com. March 2, 2013.

• "The Dream of a Common Language" by Adrienne Rich. I carried it the entire hike. On my first night, when I felt like I was in too deep, I read the first poem out loud to myself over and over.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Dream, Night, Firsts

  Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.bostonglobe.com. March 2, 2013.

• With fiction, it could be about anything. It just has to be good writing, like Maria Semple's "Where'd You Go, Bernadette," which I read recently. I want to forget I have a book in my hand.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Book, Writing, Hands

  Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.bostonglobe.com. March 2, 2013.

• A few times a year I'll remember that I love old literature, too. Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" is one of my 10 favorite books. I have to go out of my way to remember to pick up a book like that, but when I do I'm blown away by how very relevant it still is.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Book, Years, Literature

  Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.bostonglobe.com. March 2, 2013.

• 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.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Reading, Mind Blowing, Mentor

  Interview with Amy Sutherland, www.bostonglobe.com. March 2, 2013.

• So on one hand, because the wilderness was familiar to me, it really helped me be brave. But it still was scary sometimes. I had to say to myself: "Chances are, you're not going to be mauled by a bear."

  Cheryl Strayed

  Hands, Brave, Scary

  "'Wild’s' Cheryl Strayed Becomes One With Reese Witherspoon". Interview with Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. November 2014.

• 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.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Mistake, Reading, Thinking

  "'Wild’s' Cheryl Strayed Becomes One With Reese Witherspoon". Interview with Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. November/December 2014.

• I grew up in northern Minnesota on 40 acres of wooded land 20 miles from the nearest town, and so the wilderness was home. It was not an unsafe place. I had that advantage. But there are so many representations of the wilderness being dangerous. You know, depictions of wild animals attacking people. It's like, "No, we kill those animals in far greater numbers than they kill us."

  Cheryl Strayed

  Home, Animal, Land

  "'Wild’s' Cheryl Strayed Becomes One With Reese Witherspoon". Interview with Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. November 2014.

• 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.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Daughter, Mother, Stars

  "'Wild’s' Cheryl Strayed Becomes One With Reese Witherspoon". Interview with Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. November 2014.