Cheryl Strayed Quotes

We like to pretend that our generous impulses come naturally. But the reality is we often become our kindest, most ethical selves only by seeing what it feels like to be a selfish jackass first. It's the reason... we have to get burned before we understand the power of fire; the reason our most meaningful relationships are so often those that continued beyond the very juncture at which they came the closest to ending.

At first it upset me to realize how many people are, at heart, selfish. Now I take that in stride, but people's loneliness still gets to me.

the only way to become a better writer is to become a better person.

Good character consists of recognizing the selfishness that inheres in each of us and trying to balance it against the altruism to which we should all aspire. It is a difficult balance to strike, but no definition of goodness can be complete without it.

The walls of that grand edifice called a good character have to be worked at during life.

I'm trying to make myself better. But I don't regret anything that I've gone through, because it makes me who I am.

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool.

I think almost everything in life is life-experience, personality-driven.

I think I'm still figuring out how to be a little less selfish.

You'll be a good parent when you're ready to no longer be selfish. Until I was about 35, it was all about me. I look back and I'm astonished at how I lived my life - it was totally self-involved.

I never regret anything. Because every little detail of your life is what made you into who you are in the end.

Sure, I'm ashamed of a lot of the things I did, but at the same time, I wouldn't be the person I am today if I hadn't gone through those experiences.

In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect.

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

Like everybody, I've had a lot of pain in my life and I'm a work in progress. You must have a true desire to see the world from a different point of view, and that comes with growing up.

Man's nature is fundamentally good, or perhaps it is neither good nor evil. In any case, man is something to work on. We must hold fast to this fact - man is something to work on.

I've always believed in people's capacity for goodness. I still believe that people are good. What I'm not so trusting about anymore is their relationship to their own goodness.

The roles that have come into my life have taught me - and in that time period maybe I didn't even know it, but whatever came up or whatever it is that you have to express at that time, has benefitted me in a particular way.

I realized through my personal travels how little I know about certain conflicts, because I was too vain or self-absorbed to ask the questions. That's been the focus while I'm in my thirties - to become an accomplished woman, rather than some actress.

The individual is capable of both great compassion and great indifference. He has it within his means to nourish the former and outgrow the latter.

As a species, we can at times be dimwitted and cruel. But we're also capable of learning.

Character is the result of two great forces: the initial force which the Creator gave it when He called the man into being; and the force of all the external influence and culture that mold and modify the development of a life.

It's easy to point out the evil in other people, but that can be found in all of us. That selfishness, that is something we all have in us. Sometimes you are successful at dealing with it, and sometimes you are not.

I learned so much about life and other human beings - then about myself.

I learned a lot about human nature. So much, in fact, that human nature will be my specialist subject on 'Mastermind'.