At A Certain Point We Get To Decide Who It Is We Allow To Influence Us.

It's hard to go. It's scary and lonely... But it will be soul-smashingly beautiful... It will open up your life.

Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

…compassion isn't about solutions. It's about giving all the love that you've got

Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear

So write... Not like a girl. Not like a boy. Write like a motherfucker.

Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

My mother's death put me in touch with my most savage self. As I've grown up and come to terms with her death and accepted it, the pieces of her that I keep don't exist materially.

Cheryl Strayed

Be brave enough to break your own heart.

Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear

She would always be my mother, I told her, but I had to go. She wasn't there for me in that flowerbed anymore anyway, I explained. I'd put her somewhere else. The only place I could reach her. In me.

Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

The most terrible and beautiful and interesting things happen in life. For some of you, those things have already happened. 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.

Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Letting go of expectation when it comes to one's children is close to impossible. The entire premise of our love for them has to do with creating, fostering, and nurturing people who will outlive us. To us, they are not so much who they are as who they will become.

Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

You will regret the small thing you didn't say for the rest of your life. Say thank you.

Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

I receive a lot of letters like yours. Most go on in length, describing all sorts of maddening situations and communications in bewildered detail, but in each there is the same question at its core: Can I convince the person about whom I am crazy to be crazy about me? The short answer is no. The long answer is no.

Cheryl Strayed