Quotessence
Home / Authors / Cheryl Strayed
Cheryl Strayed

Cheryl Strayed Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsPeopleWayWritingThinkingKnowsCheryl StrayedHardMotherAdviceGivingFeelsTiny Beautiful ThingsBelieveInspirationalLifeLoveFeltMadeDear Sugar

Famous Cheryl Strayed Quotes

“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.”

LoveMotherDeath And DyingDeath Of A Loved One
Book:Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Create image

“Small things such as this have saved me: how much I love my mother — even after all these years. How powerfully I carry her within me. My grief is tremendous but my love is bigger. So is yours. You are not grieving your son’s death because his death was ugly and unfair. You’re grieving it because you loved him truly. The beauty in that is greater than the bitterness of his death.”

YearsMotherLove IsGriefGreaterSonBiggerUglySavedGrievingBitternessUnfairSmall ThingsYour SonI Love My Mother
Author:Cheryl Strayed
Create image

“One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don’t look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don’t hold it up and say it’s longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn’t say for the rest of your life. Say thank you.”

GivingLooksLastsMotherPerfectRegretMonthsSpringTwentiesWarmSavedCoatsSmall ThingsRest Of Your LifeSaying Thank YouYou Will Regret
Author:Cheryl Strayed
Create image

“Each night the black sky and the bright stars were my stunning companions; occasionally Id see their beauty and solemnity so plainly that I'd realize in a piercing way that my mother was right. That someday I WOULD be grateful and that in fact I was grateful now, that I felt something growing in me that was strong and real.”

WayRealFactsWould BeMotherNightStrongStarsFeltBlackRealizingGrowingSkyGratefulSomedayCompanionBe GratefulStunningPiercingsSolemnityBright Star
Author:Cheryl Strayed
Create image

“I never got to be in the driver's seat of my own life," she'd wept to me once, in the days after she learned she was going to die. "I always did what someone else wanted me to do. I've always been someone's daughter or mother or wife. I've never just been me." "Oh, Mom," was all I could say as I stroked her hand. I was too young to say anything else."”

InspirationalHandsWantedYoungMotherDiesMy OwnWifeJourneyMomDaughterLife ChangingSeatsDriversSay AnythingMy Own Life
Book:Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found
Create image