Cheryl Quotes

But the thing was, I didn't want it. Maybe I never really had. I'd finally come to understand what it had been: a yearning for a way out, when actually what I had wanted to find was a way in. I was there now. Or close. ~ Cheryl Strayed

My pack rose up like a mantle behind me, towering several inches above my head, and gripped me like a vice all the way down to my tailbone. It felt pretty awful, and yet perhaps this was how it felt to be a backpacker.
I didn't know.
I only knew that it was time to go, so I opened the door and stepped into the light. ~ Cheryl Strayed

We were always eating expired things. Milk, bread, biscuits, cake. We forgot about them as they sat around the house and just as they had gone bad, we put them in our mouths. Chocolates I brought back with me from Australia, cheeses in last year's Christmas hamper, juice from the last time someone decided to go grocery shopping. We didn't always realize they tasted funny – not everything curdles and a two-month-old orange can be just as sweet. When we did, it was usually too late. Sometimes it wasn't. We finished what we had started anyway. ~ Cheryl Julia Lee

I walked all those miles, I learned all those lessons. It's as if my new life was the gift I got at the end of a long struggle. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Pastor Smith did not have the religious constitution needed to provide salvation for any of us who'd had a hand in this tragic event. We had put on the armour of God, and there was no undoing what we had done. My faith, my belief in myself as a good citizen, everything I had thought was truth was scattered to the wind, and no one on this earth could put that to rights. Things weren't as simple as living and dying. I understood that now. ~ Cheryl R Cowtan

When you trust and act on your intuition, you increase your self-esteem, build trust in yourself and experience a profound sense of security that no relationship or amount of money will ever give you. ~ Cheryl Richardson

Our thinking absolutely affects the physical body. ~ Cheryl Richardson

Whenever somebody folds, say, 'Good laydown.' It encourages them to fold on a later hand because it makes them feel like you had the best hand even if you were bluffing. It's an odd form of flattery that seems to work at the poker table. ~ Cheryl Hines

If I can help get anybody through puberty, I say, 'Good!' ~ Cheryl Ladd

Think thoughts that make you feel good, make choices that make you feel good, and take actions that make you feel good. ~ Cheryl Richardson

I happen to believe that America is dying of loneliness, that we, as a people, have bought into the false dream of convenience, and turned away from a deep engagement with our internal lives - those fountains of inconvenient feeling - and toward the frantic enticements of what our friends in the Greed Business call the Free Market. We're hurtling through time and space and information faster and faster, seeking that network connection. But at the same time we're falling away from our families and our neighbors and ourselves. We ego-surf and update our status and brush up on which celebrities are ruining themselves, and how. But the cure won't stick. ~ Cheryl Strayed

I remember feeling all right with myself until age 13. Then, I was getting off the bus one day and this guy called me Miss Piggy. That was the first time I ever really felt like I wasn't okay. ~ Cheryl James

It was then that the seven-year-old said, "I am ready. What wonderful place will we visit tonight?"
"I can take you wherever your dreams desire," the calico pony replied on their first night together. ~ Cheryl Price

It wasn't until my last year of college, 1976, that I decided well, maybe he's right. Delbert had been pushing me since high school to put 100% into my music. ~ Cheryl Lynn

Hen you recognize that you will thrive not in spite of your losses and sorrows, but because of them, that you would not have chosen the things that happened in your life, but you are grateful for them, that you will hold the empty bowls eternally in your hands, but you also have the capacity to fill them? The word for that is healing. ~ Cheryl Strayed

I was trying to find a new home in the world. ~ Cheryl Strayed

This isn't a spotless life. There is much ahead, my immaculate little peach. And there is no way to say it other than to say it: marriage is indeed this horribly complex thing for which you appear to be ill prepared and about which you seem to be utterly naive. That's okay. A lot of people are. You can learn along the way. A good way to start would be to let fall your notions about "perfect couples." It's really such an impossible thing to either perceive honestly in others or live up to when others believe it about us. It does nothing but box some people in and shut other people out, and it ultimately makes just about everyone feel like shit. A perfect couple is a wholly private thing. No one but the two people in the perfect relationship know for certain whether they're in one. Its only defining quality is that it's composed of two people who feel perfectly right about sharing their lives with each other, even during the hard times. ~ Cheryl Strayed

When something that's a part of you causes you so much pain–pain others inflict–you obsess about it. ~ Cheryl Rainfield

Hard as I fought for it to be otherwise, finally I had to admit it too: without my mother, we weren't what we'd been; we were four people floating separately among the flotsam of our grief, connected by only the thinnest rope. ~ Cheryl Strayed

You're asking," I said. "I've always been the one to end ~ Cheryl Strayed

If you fear the unknown you are certainly not alone. Many of God's children refuse opportunities to step through doors and into gloriously new territories. They are either too comfortable in life, or unwilling (mind you I did not say unable) to trust Him with the stretching of their faith. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Hebrews. 11:1 (NKJV) ~ Cheryl Zelenka

The father's job is to teach his children how to be warriors, to give them the confidence to get on the horse to ride into battle when it's necessary to do so. If you don't get that from your father, you have to teach yourself. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Will you do it later or will you do it now? ~ Cheryl Strayed

You can't afford to let the heartbreaks in life ruin your future. ~ Cheryl Koevoet

It's a lot easier to see what's irrational in another culture than it is to see it in our own. ~ Cheryl Chase

It had been so silent in the wake of that commotion, a kind of potent silence that seemed to contain everything. The songs of the birds and the creak of the trees. The dying snow and the unseen gurgling water. The glimmering sun. The certain sky. The gun that didn't have a bullet in its chamber. And the mother. Always the mother. The one who would never come to me. ~ Cheryl Strayed

I've learned so much from my mistakes ... I'm thinking of making some more. ~ Cheryl Cole

To focus means to bring your attention to the center, to concentrate on one thing intently in order to gain clarity. ~ Cheryl Richardson

So, what's it like to be an Angel?" Bryon's voice fills the uncomfortable silence.
The Angels bark with laughter. "It's wonderful," Elijah sings. ~ Cheryl McIntyre

Leaders stand out. Good leaders succeed. Great leaders make a difference in the world. ~ Cheryl Richardson

When I finished my college education my agent said to me ... 'The key to beauty is to be always educating yourself, always learning something new, always doing something new and to have something to talk about.' And I never forgot that, and I think that's how one ages beautifully. ~ Cheryl Tiegs

Sometimes the thing you fear the most in your relationship turns out to be the thing that brings you and your partner to a deeper place of understanding and intimacy. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Asmoday." She brushes her lips against his forehead. "You stupid, stupid idiot." Kisses each of his cheeks. "Why did you do that, you big dummy?"
He smiles at her. "I am not an expert, but I am fairly certain those are not correct terms of endearment. ~ Cheryl McIntyre

And now it was official: I loved REI more than I loved the people behind Snapple lemonade. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Wounded?" was all I could manage. "Yes," said Pat. "And you're wounded in the same place. That's what fathers do if they don't heal their wounds. They wound their children in the same place. ~ Cheryl Strayed

I can't hurt any more than I've been hurt, I can't cry any more than I've cried. I've been to the highest of highs and lowest of lows, so one day I'm going to find my middle ground and be happy. ~ Cheryl Cole

I want to tell you you look beautiful, but I know you don't like that." He dips his chin toward his chest and presses his lips together. "Is it alright if I say that I couldn't breathe for a minute when I saw you? Or that it took every last ounce of self restraint to not start making out with you in front of Guy and Annie? Because the only thing that held me back was the idea you wouldn't like that very much. ~ Cheryl McIntyre

Sometimes I don't want to stand around a room full of strangers, chitchatting about nothing, so I'll come late to a party - and leave early. Though now that I'm saying this in a magazine, I'll probably never be invited to another one. ~ Cheryl Hines

Christians often want to hide behind the walls of the church, where we are comfortable, but sometimes we have to come out of the box. ~ Cheryl James

Let yourself be gutted. Let it open you. Start here. ~ Cheryl Strayed

When the path reveals itself, follow it. ~ Cheryl Strayed

I once feared death. It is said that death begins with the absence of life. And life begins when death is no longer feared. I have stared death in the eye and survived. ~ Cheryl Kaye Tardif

Read it like a motherfucker. ~ Cheryl Strayed

The PCT had taught me what a mile was. ~ Cheryl Strayed

I hate my body Hate what it remembers. Hate what it let him do. ~ Cheryl Rainfield

The healing power of even the most microscopic exchange with someone who knows in a flash precisely what you're talking about because she experienced that thing too cannot be overestimated. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Now everyday ain't gonna be no picnic
Love ain't no walk in the park
All you can do is make the best of it now
Can't be afraid of the dark
Just know that you're not in this thing alone
There's always a place in me that you can call home. ~ Cheryl Cole

Don't believe the things you tell yourself late at night. ~ Cheryl Cole

Manage your mind. When we direct our thoughts and words toward the outcome we most desire, we ignite grace. ~ Cheryl Richardson

You have to say I am forgiven again and again until it becomes the story you believe about yourself. ~ Cheryl Strayed

To us, they are not so much who they are as who they will become. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Write like a motherfucker. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Awareness is a powerful catalyst for positive change. ~ Cheryl Richardson

I don't know how to make you believe I'm sorry. I fucked up. I made a huge mistake. Again. I know that, but I also know there is way more to what happened than you're telling. I was freaked out and I wasn't thinking clearly, but I would never purposely hurt you, Hope. Ever. I didn't even kiss you until you asked me to. I would never... ~ Cheryl McIntyre

I knew that her love for me was vaster than the ten thousand things and also the ten thousand things beyond that. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Because no matter how experimental he is, his life isn't an experiment. ~ Cheryl Strayed

And that's what the problem was – Kitty had finally nailed it. In the six months of Etcetera stories that Kitty had pored over, she now realised she hadn't written a single article that had been an idea of her own. Each story had been proposed by Pete or Cheryl or by somebody else who had enough on their own plate and was unable to write it. She hadn't noticed it happening because she hadn't minded. ~ Cecelia Ahern

When I was working with Barry Sonnenfeld, I'd watch him set up a shot and talk to him about what he was seeing and what it was to shoot comedy. He told me that a lot of times with comedy, it's not just about getting the joke, but getting a reaction to the joke. That's the laugh - it's somebody's else's reaction to the joke. ~ Cheryl Hines

It was a world I'd never been to and yet had known was there all along, one I'd staggered to in sorrow and confusion and fear and hope. A world I thought would both make me into the woman I knew I could become and turn me back into the girl I'd once been. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Nothing soulful is birthed from force. ~ Cheryl Richardson

When you say you experience my writing as sacred, what you are touching is the divine place within me that is my mother. Sugar is the temple I built in my obliterated place. ~ Cheryl Strayed

What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was what also had got me here? What ~ Cheryl Strayed

It hadn't occurred to me that my mother would die. Until she was dying, the thought had never entered my mind. She was monolithic and insurmountable, the keeper of my life. She would grow old and still work in the garden. This image was fixed in my mind, like one of the memories from her childhood that I made her explain so intricately that I remembered it as if it were mine. She would be old and beautiful like the black-and-white photo of Georgia O'Keeffe I'd once sent her. I held fast to this image for the first couple of weeks after we left the Mayo Clinic, and then, once she was admitted to the hospice wing of the hospital in Duluth, that image unfurled, gave way to the others, more modest and true. I imagined my mother in October; I wrote the scene in my mind. And then the one of my mother in August and another in May. Each day that passed, another month peeled away. ~ Cheryl Strayed

I'd first heard of it only seven months before, when I was living in Minneapolis, ~ Cheryl Strayed

wished she'd done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very height of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we'd left off. She ~ Cheryl Strayed

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

I don't think I'm a style icon, not at all. Sometimes I just want to rock out in me scruffs and me Uggs. You know, a really comfy old tracksuit with maybe a dollop of ketchup down the front. ~ Cheryl Cole

Work hard. Do good. Be incredible! ~ Cheryl Strayed

It is through our imperfections that our true beauty shines through. ~ Cheryl L. Ilov

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. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Each evening, I ached for the shelter of my tent, for the smallest sense that something was shielding me from the entire rest of the world, keeping me safe not from danger, but from vastness itself. I loved the dim, clammy dark of my tent, the cozy familiarity of the way I arranged my few belongings all around me each night. ~ Cheryl Strayed

You are an artist. The canvas is your life. Make something worth staring at. ~ Cheryl Richardson

If you want to enjoy life more fully, the trick is to teach yourself to live in the insightful mode more often. ~ Cheryl Richardson

I have enough scars.
I do not have enough scars. ~ Cheryl McIntyre

We yogied this from day hikers for you. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Lean back into the arms of grace. ~ Cheryl Richardson

We are all entitled to our opinions and religious beliefs, but we are not entitled to make shit up and then use the shit we made up to oppress other people. ~ Cheryl Strayed

I saw no one, but, strange as it was, I missed no one. I ~ Cheryl Strayed

The only way you'll find out if you "have it in you" is to get to work and see if you do. The only way to override your "limitations, insecurities, jealousies, and ineptitude" is to produce. You have limitations. You are in some way inept. This is true of every writer, and it's especially true of writers who are twenty-six. You will feel insecure and jealous. How much power you give those feelings is entirely up to you. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Koji's mouth twitched in disgust. "Who are you people?" he asked, as he had before. "You're not ... " But he didn't even dare say that dangerous word
ninja. ~ Cheryl Aylward Whitesel

I'd finally come to understand what *it* had been: a yearning for a way out, when actually what I had wanted to find was a way in. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Grief is tremendous, but love is bigger. You are grieving because you loved truly. The beauty in that is greater than the bitterness of death. Allowing this into your consciousness will not keep you from suffering, but it will help you survive the next day. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Pets
CANINE ETIQUETTE
When guests bring a dog along, always serve your dog before theirs. ~ Cheryl A. Russell

I just don't get boys; I don't really get men. ~ Cheryl Cole

Healing is a small and ordinary and very burnt thing. And it's one thing and one thing only: it's doing what you have to do. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Critasism is just a way of saying i'm jelous of your talents ~ Rayvon L. Browne

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. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Don't run from me," he repeated. "I can't protect you if I'm not there." Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears, but she lifted her stubborn chin and nodded.
"I promise."
The need to protect her filled him. "Why didn't you tell me he hurt you?" His gaze dropped to her breast. Her face colored daintily as she tugged her blouse together and buttoned it.
"It's nothing."
Matt stared into her soft blue eyes. As tough as she tried to act, she was delicate, fragile. He wanted to put her up on a safe shelf until this mess was over. Not let anyone near her. Remorse filled his eyes.
"I'm sorry you were hurt."
The knowledge that he'd never hurt her made her smile. ~ Cheryl Yeko

I didn't get to grow up and pull away from her and bitch about her with my friends and confront her about the things I'd wished she'd done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very heigh of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we'd left off. She was my mother, but I was motherless. I was trapped by her, but utterly alone. She would always be the empty bowl that no one could full. I'd have to fill it myself again and again and again. ~ Cheryl Strayed

I listen to lots of music, especially Bach, opera (all periods), German lieder, chamber music, and rock, old and new. I can't listen to music while I write. It's too absorbing. ~ Cheryl Mendelson

Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Romantic love is not a competitive sport. ~ Cheryl Strayed

I made it the mantra of those days; when I paused before yet another series of switchbacks or skidded down knee-jarring slopes, when patches of flesh peeled off my feet along with my socks, when I lay alone and lonely in my tent at night I asked, often out loud: Who is tougher than me?
The answer was always the same, and even when I knew absolutely there was no way on this earth that it was true, I said it anyway: No one. ~ Cheryl Strayed

An Indigo Bunting let out a trill, a cheery song, reminding me of better days, of hope and happiness and all the lofty promises a blue canary can sing about. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath of the heady morning air. Looking within myself, I searched for the man I once was. ~ Cheryl R Cowtan

I don't want to hurt you, Lucy, but I will ~ Cheryl McIntyre

you're not dead-you're dormant. ~ Cheryl Nielsen

Run toward the darkness, sweet peas, and shine. ~ Cheryl Strayed

She cries harder and I know I should hug her, comfort her in some way, but I'm selfishly counting the pieces of my heart that lie on the floor around me.
One for every touch.
One for every kiss.
One for every time I told him I loved him.
One for every time he told me. ~ Cheryl McIntyre

For my grandfather

Quote from "INCUBUS"

The genealogical table is an important branch of life, and whether life's hand is bitter or sweet, it must be treated delicately.
- C.L. Cropper ~ Cheryl L. Cropper

Dave had been fun when they'd first dated. Then impending fatherhood had sobered him at the same time Mickle and Company had crooked its finger, turning him from Mr. Right to Mr. Wrong. ~ Cheryl Sterling