Strayed Book Quotes & Sayings

How many people will die, have died, because of the wasted talents of intelligent and gifted women, forced into domestic drudgery, corseted by paternal demands, strangled by denial of opportunity? — Ayelet Waldman

Health is a habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time. — Mark Twain

I'd stopped being grandiose. I'd lowered myself to the notion that the absolute only thing that mattered was getting that extra beating heart out of my chest. Which meant I had to write my book. My very possibly mediocre book. My very possibly never-going-to-be-published book. My absolutely nowhere-in-league-with-the-writers-I'd-admired-so-much-that-I-practically-memorized-their-sentences book. — Cheryl Strayed

If you do an autopsy on an 85-year-old who died of a stroke, you will find five other things that person was about to die from. — S. Jay Olshansky

I'm the mold that grunge was grown in. — Townes Van Zandt

One Saturday morning walking to the farmers' market with my lover she tells me she needs to look like a man on the street. She hates binding her breasts. Hates having breasts, hates not passing. I press her. I ask her, but what do you feel like when you're naked in bed with me? Do you like your body then? She is quiet. Later she tells me she had a dream. Her mother brought home a bottle of medicine from the hospital for her. The doctor says she has to take it. The medicine is testosterone.

On Shabbat I remember to pray for enough space inside of me to hold all the darkness of the night and all the sunlight of the day. I pray for enough space for transformations as miraculous as the shift from day to night.

Later when that lover has changed his name and an ex-boyfriend has come out to me as a lesbian I go to visit my best friend's sister-turned-brother-turned-sister-again and she tells me about the blessing of having many names and using them all at once. — M.J. Kaufman

I'm encouraging these women, like Cheryl Strayed, to take the jump to writing for the screen. She is adapting her book Tiny Beautiful Things for us. They're infinitely capable of tackling the format. — Reese Witherspoon

You knew me. You KNOW me. I can't imagine my life without you, without someone who knows me that well. — Deb Caletti

In my life I've easily lost 500 pounds but for some reason they keep finding me. — Gael Greene

The way to write a book is the application of the seat of one's pants to the seat of one's chair — J.B. Priestley

Wickedly Dangerous translates a terrifying figure from folklore , the Baba Yaga, into the smart, resourceful, motorcycle-riding Barbara Yager, who travels with her dragon-disguised-as-a-dog best friend, righting wrongs and helping those in need. But when she stumbles into a town whose children are vanishing, and meets the haunted young sheriff trying to save them, what was a job becomes very personal. This is urban fantasy at its best, with all the magic and mayhem tied together with very human emotions, even when the characters aren't quite human. — Alex Bledsoe

All I've been a part of has been thanks to the Disney company: the job, experience, travel, opportunities have come thanks to Disney. Working for Disney was not part of my original plan, but it was part of God's, and it shows that God is still moving. — Jodi Benson

There are no composite characters or events in this book. I occasionally omitted people and events, but only when that omission had no impact on either the veracity or the substance of the story. — Cheryl Strayed

Penning an advice column for the literary website The Rumpus, [Strayed] worked anonymously, using the pen name Sugar, replying to letters from readings suffering everything from loveless marriages to abusive, drug-addicted brothers to disfiguring illnesses. The result: intimate, in-depth essays that not only took the letter writer's life into account but also Strayed's. Collected in a book, they make for riveting, emotionally charged reading (translation: be prepared to bawl) that leaves you significantly wiser for the experience ... Moving ... compassionate. — Leigh Newman

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

Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don't know what it is yet. — Cheryl Strayed

Reading's my reward at the end of the day — Cheryl Strayed

I make you see things that aren't really there and you believe every word — Genesis Quihuis

the son of toil. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own. — Cheryl Strayed